This was from a prompt I was given for Amsterdam – my fingers are twitching to amend it, so it may change a little…but I think it’s ok for a draft.

Home is turning a city over and over in your heart, jigsawing the pieces, wondering if you turn it the right way maybe it will somehow fit-

-and home is wondering what one piece you’re missing, what shape you’re meant to be, because nowhere feels quite right.

Home is a fragment of every place I’ve loved, swapped with a shard of memory, and welded with broken longing for something that won’t ever exist again, not like that, not like it was.

Maybe home should be a place where I look across rooftops and know every spire, every shortcut; have a heartache for every corner, a laugh for every golden hour, a secret for every drink.

Maybe home should be the way the wind ripples the water, the sunlight on tarmac and paving, the step around the crowd on a corner. The one cracked tile in the grand facade, the tiny alley leading to the best pub, the glare of orange lights as I turn into my street.

Maybe home should be the warmth shared over a meal; the one loaned book on a shelf of loved pages; the music that fills a silent room.

Maybe home should be the way you smile at me.