My Home Isn't My Safe Haven

V

V. When Does a House Become a Home?

Even your actions are at odds with each other. I notice a difference in your departures - yours are slow and sullen, careful to avoid disrupting the small moments of peace we have, but your movements are filled with a callous eagerness, desperate to leave this space - and I'm reminded of the ways we all mourn the breaking of a home.

I learn to breathe again when one of you is away, and the touchdown to steady ground is an unusual sensation, a welcomed and savoured one. It's taken a while to accept I can't cement these cracks, so I leave you be to mutter your goodbyes

for however long these foundations will last.