You said you were going home. It’s a truism:
no one ever can. Home is not a place—
it’s a time, a memory, an impression
the scent of lilac tumbling over stone walls
the taste of sweet sun-warmed fruit
laughter echoing along cobbled streets.
The voices called; I know you hear phrases
spoken in the language of your childhood
and give them special weight, even if they’re
meaningless. You left so long ago, the culture
is etched in your soul, not your mind—
in deep feelings and narrow memories.
Did it even exist, this place hurting your heart
with longing? Is it a world you never saw,
only think you recognize? And finally
in the end all that remains is this hunger,
this ache, this sense of something lost and gone
and dead. There are no magic words to open
the vault, to reanimate the shadows from your
past, to return you to a person you are not now—
and perhaps never were.