What We Return To

Home is a place where the world softens Where clocks forgot to chase the hours It waits with open hands and steady breaths A light left on, no matter how late you arrive. It lives in the bend of familiar streets In floors that know the weight of your footsteps Every wall has learned your name Spoke it quietly, while you're gone. Home smells like morning and memory Bread warming, rain settling into dust, old books, Clean sheets, something sweet you can never Quite name but always recognized. Here laughter stains the corners of the room And sadness is allowed to sit and stay No one rushes to the door Grief is given a chair and a cup of tea. The windows have watched you grown Heard your doubts, your almost-dreams, Seen you leave with brave eyes And return with tired ones. Home keeps what the world ask you to drop Your softness, your questions, your unspoken truths, It does not ask you who you've become only if Hungry, only if you're safe. Even the quiet means something here It isn't empty its listening It hums with the promises That you don't have to earn your rest. Home is not perfect, never still, It creaks, it forgets, it forgives, But it stands though seasons and storms Saying again and again: stay And when everything feels temporary When the roads grows long and loud Home is the pause between breaths The place where you remember who you are.