Hiraeth

Nostalgia sounds as meaningless on my lips

as the welcome on the doormat of my threshold.

Nowadays returning home seems like a pilgrimage 

That I am too young to make.

Home was like a battlefield. And

Growing up is a war which nobody wins 

But it eventually leaves prisoners of that war 

captive in their own homeland 

With refugee camps where ever two walls meet.

We are a generation brought up on mayhem and gunpowder 

which explains why we can't wait to explode at the first sight of a spark.

When I say spark I mean mother was Poseidon 

and all father ever did was breathe fire. 

And that is exactly what " they complete each other" stands for.

While mother had patience for breakfast I had barbed wire 

and that's when I learned that too much on your plate

can also leave you starving.

For dessert, we had her tears and when I say tears I mean

I was born without a sweet tooth.

Mother was hope. 

Mother was Sisyphus carrying us on her back towards the zenith every day 

only for us to roll back down like boulders as we grew heavier every day 

by our crippling anxieties.

Mother taught us how to spell apocalypse and father taught us how to survive it.

Mother taught us that stove fires could burn down houses while father ignited arsons.

Mother engulfed oceans so when father returned home she had enough

To swallow

To extinguish and 

To drown

Home taught us that you cannot save a burning house from within if the only water left is in your eyes.

Home taught us that denial is not synonymous with coping mechanisms and the first 2 rules of fight club do not apply to depression.

Home taught us that you do not fight the monsters of your childhood with paper boats.

Home taught us that when the blizzards of insecurities make you tremble a blanket of synthetic happiness won't keep you warm.

Home taught us that there are some questions even battles can't answer like why my poems about homes sound more like an elegy. 

Why my something Blue and borrowed would be Patriarchy passed down like an ancestral heirloom.

Why returning home seems like a pilgrimage

But I do it a thousand times over to atone for the sins I never committed.

Why violence follows peace and is not followed by it.

Why our ideals are our mothers but we don't want to end up like them

Why fear forms a noose around our throat and chokes us while mother screams in the next room

Why our country has a history of women who thought death meant redemption.

Home is like a cemetery with beds for coffins and parents for priests seeking tirelessly a hymn that would put us to rest. 

So someday if you find me 

finally at peace 

I probably am

Dead.