I came “home” today

Yes, I know i’ve always grown up calling this place my real home

where my favorite pair of shoes stay and my friends belong,

but now it’s as if the bees hive don’t have honey

leaking dry a cave of dark holes

not sweet but bitter

I am a bird that migrated for the winter and came back to yet an icy palace

Things have stayed the same

How can things be the same if they feel so different

My friends are still here

my closest still holds my shoes

I still receive love with every hug

but now it’s empty

hollow

bare

raw

not the raw you can say you like

not genuine or authentic

just raw

very plain and sad

I am alone here,

My parents work from home

I can walk to my friends house

My cat and dogs visit me in the night

How can every hug be filled with love if I am not given one?

I leave through the front door every cold morning

My parents say have a good day

I say goodbye

I come home and my parents have not moved

Their faces are hollow with sunken cheeks

dark eyes and thin bodies

I don’t eat dinner

I miss the family meals

I miss seeing my brother and sisters faces while we make fun of and tease each other at the table

My brother complained about my chewing

He doesn’t complain anymore

he says he likes the silence

Silence is just that,

silence

It can be a lot of things but it looks like one

it’s looking in the mirror and deciding to change my outfit before school

Its taking more food than I should because it’s the only way to make up for lost time

Time i’d be happy at a table I sit in my room stuffing my face

knowing my mom would be snorting at me

For me home is love

Home is coming back from a long day and feeling like you belong

I come home tired and hungry

hungry that cannot be filled by food

My dad filled this hungry,

my stepmom buried this hungry

She fed it until it was happy and healthy

Days she’d come home from work and give me hugs while I was crying in my room

are days I will come home and clean and make dinner and do homework and then go to sleep

I cry too

just at night

allowing the only person left to hug me being myself

The solutions is always knives, drugs, and fire than family meals and movies

Forced family fun is never fun

until you don’t have fun with your family at all

Really, it’s all I want

My friends complain of the times they are made to go biking with their parents or help their sister move into her new dorm

here, family doesn’t exists.

You’re left with just your hand to hold at the end of the day

and while you’ll never grow up with a mom waiting on you left and center, you won’t know what it’s like to grow up with one at all