inspired by frank ocean’s “in my room.” written for her.
—
You felt like home.
We were enveloped by uneven walls, crooked lights, and a bed that fit us perfectly without an ounce of space wasted. In one ear hummed familiar tunes from our yesteryears. Funny thing though, because I only heard the parts that translated what my heart was feeling in that moment, except I lacked the courage to vocalize. One song talked about how I’ve found you. Another lamented two people going their separate ways, to which I couldn’t help but wonder why all of this felt like a break-up before anything really started. Six months sounds brief, but when you measure time against the blooming and withering of flowers, the bitterness of winter and the radiance of springtime… 180 days broken into thousands of hours, some of which I no doubt will spend imagining what would, could, should have been if only you weren’t halfway across the vast ocean.
Time might fly, but you are the pilot and I am the passenger.
How did we even get here? We started out as perfect strangers. I went into it reminding myself, day and night, that with you, I didn’t want to test the gods of chance. I didn’t want to take any risks because our friendship was a dam, and any crack would empty the reservoirs I so desperately sought for my weary soul. I, the self-proclaimed champion of mindfulness and knowing myself, vowed that I would keep you at just enough of a distance to preclude the complexities of developing something more.
But it’s never that easy, is it?
They say that when you look for something too hard, you miss it. You foolishly forget that it had been right in front of you this entire time, staring, smiling, breathing. To be human is to always look beyond the horizon for what we seek. It was never in our DNA to stop in our tracks and realize the other side of the mountain peaks is just vast nothingness, that everything you could ever want is in the warmth emanating from the hearth that was your embrace.
That night, you smelled like soft pastel.
We often talked about what it means to feel at home. You confessed you felt like a wanderer at times, not knowing where you belong. I gave you the conventional wisdom — “home is where the heart is” — to reassure you. But I left out the second part. I wanted to tell you, “so let me be your home.” Because when two people come together, they build a sandcastle on the shores, built on eternal memories, protected from the reach of violent tides that is life.
And maybe… just maybe, the waves won’t have to feel so sad about waving goodbye to the cliffs anymore. After all, they can now bear witness us and our adventures to come.
