HOMESICK

childhood room/mom/love & hate

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When you come back to the place where you grew up, amidst the people who look so familiar, you forget how you don’t recognise any of it anymore. It is terrible when you realise that. You feel time slipping away from you, and there’s nothing you can do.

These three poems are about that, the hard part of adulting. The transition. When a part of you is not ready to grow up, just yet.

The first one, childhood room, is about my … childhood room. It is the one that I wrote first. It was the moment I realised that I have grown and that the room had too. It has changed over time, not in a way that takes away its personality, but just a few little fixes and changes that make it look tamer than how I remembered it.

The second one, mom, was the hardest to write. It is like a conversation between her and me that never happened. It’s like a voicemail. I wrote this after coming back to college. It is a one-sided conversation asking: how do you deal with reality? how do you move on from failures?

I feel like if I were a kid, I would’ve asked her this and she would’ve lied to me. Telling me something like: “one step at a time”. Now, I can see right through her lies and she has lost her ability to protect me from the world. I know there aren’t any answers to these questions but it feels good knowing, you are asking the right person.

The third one, love & hate, an ode to my hometown. I remember seeing new places open up and old ones closing down. New buildings, new people. It felt like looking from a distorted lens. Some pieces looked familiar, while some looked unknown. So many faces I remember from my past are still there. Alive and breathing, in grocery stores, at crossroads, on morning walks. It felt a little hollow when I realised, I don’t know this city like I used to. It is lost to me.

I. CHILDHOOD ROOM

II. MOM

III. LOVE & HATE

Thank you for reading!

~ Ash