The blog will pick a word of the week, to share & explore the selected word. Here’s an expression for the word – kāinga (Māori).
Home is not always four walls
Or a roof holding back the rain
Sometimes, it is a voice that says our name
And makes the world feel soft again.
It is the quiet after a long day
The familiar creak beneath our feet
The scent of something warm in the kitchen
The comfort of a well-worn seat.
Home is where our silences
Are never asked to explain themselves
Where we can let down our burdens
Besides the shoes we left by the shelf.
Sometimes, home is a person
A hand that finds ours in the dark
A heart that knows our broken places
And loves us there, without remark.
Sometimes, home is something
We spend our whole life trying to find
Until one day we look within ourself
To discover we’ve been carrying it all this time.
For home is not where we stay
It is where our souls can rest
It is the place, the person, the memory
That makes us feel
We have finally arrived.
There are places
That hold our footsteps
And places that hold our hearts.
Home is the second kind.
It is an old photograph
Faded at the edges
The afternoon sun
Resting quietly on the floor.
It is every version of us
That was allowed to exist there
The child, the dreamer
The one who got lost
The one who came back.
Home remembers who we were
When the world did not yet
Ask us to become someone else.
And, perhaps that is why even years later
When life has carried us far from its doorstep
A certain smell
A certain song
A certain seaside sunset
Can suddenly make us homesick
For a life we thought we had forgotten.
And, perhaps that is what we spend our whole lives seeking
Not a perfect place
But, somewhere
Our hearts can finally stop
Standing guard.
Somewhere we can breathe.
Somewhere we can close our eyes
And, for a little while, feel that we belong.
