Home, the Place Where One Resides

Home is the place where you live, where you laugh and cry, where your family is, where you feel safe and loved. Home for me is the soft whirr of food heating up in the microwave, spreading the familiar smell of spices from Sri Lanka. It’s the fresh pancakes on my plate, round and spread with jam and butter. The restful calming feeling of sitting down and reading a good book, like nothing else exists, just the world you’re reading about, the story twisting and turning like a serpent made from words. The flowers that splash color around like paint splattering on a canvas. The taste of rice and curry that never gets old, even though we have it every day. The sound of cars whizzing past on the road like tiny rocket ships, rushing to carry their passengers to their destination. The smooth feeling of the glass table and the white plates we dine on. The grainy feeling of a rock that I collected years ago, the designs sometimes spotted or completely blank. But home can be loud and crazy too. Like the annoying sound of you and your siblings fighting over something that doesn’t matter, filling the house with shouts and yells. The alarming rush of the morning when you’re running late and don’t have time to breathe like the whole world is moving faster than you. The sinking sensation you get when you know that you’re going to be caught like a viper wrapped around your chest slowly squeezing the air out of you. The deafening barking of the dog next door ringing in your ears when you try to sleep. But for everyone home is where you belong, the good and the bad, where you can be yourself no matter what.