by Anthony Bruce Cabuenas and Graphics by Raia Ishe Hahn Cabico
I gave ‘Home’ a name once.
It was you.
But you were never a house, never a place I could return to with a key in my hand. Instead home was the sound of your voice, the comfort of your presence, the quiet feeling that, for a moment, I had somewhere to belong. That even for a while, I could find rest flocked in your warm embrace.
But perhaps that was the cruelest part.
For yes, I could always find my way back to you, yet somehow I could never stay.
I was a migrating bird and admittedly, I kept crossing distances just to return to the same place. I flew through seasons carrying the foolish hope that maybe, someday, calling you home wouldn’t feel like a mere belief, that someday it would ring the truth.
I then realized, maybe some people can truly feel like home without ever becoming yours?
So I kept flying not because I was free, but because I had nowhere else to go. Like my wings were clipped to the thought of your breeze but having no compass forward.
I became a slave to the journey back to my home that never was.
And ironically upon every arrival, no master stood before me with a whip. No iron clasped my ankles. No cages were high enough to keep me from the sky. Yet every time I tried to fly beyond him, there was a force that kept pulling my wings.
Perhaps they were knitted from every moment you made me feel safe? Perhaps they were woven from every word that sounded like forever, even when you never promised one.
Or maybe I built them myself, brick by brick from the scraps of us or what could have been, us.
Maybe this was my calling? The idea of being given wings and still believe that I was made for the cage. Like I was Icarus who was willing to burn myself with the wings I worked so hard on just to be melted by the scorching heat from the sun I called your warmth. I knew better, yes, but because for a moment, being close to you made me feel like you were worth the inevitable fall.
But I returned.
When the summer ended, I returned.
When the leaves of autumn colored the path of newer winds, I returned to you anyway.
Again and again, I saw myself gliding towards you.
Not because you called, but because I got acquainted with the path towards home.
I began to measure life through departures and returns, each time swearing that I would be different. Every instance after the other, I begged God to guide my wings to newer skies other than the familiar cage. Yet somehow, the wind blew towards your direction.
Now, my feathers bleed the ink etched on my pen as I write this piece, falling downwards in the steel platforms of the cage you built for me to lock myself in.
And I will keep returning.
But until the next journey, I will continue flying until I can no more. I will continue to defy the gravity that pulls me back. I will resist the instances of remembering the laughter we shared together on the bus going home. I will free myself from your promises that held me hostage.
I will taste the freedom of another sky and convince myself this time that I am finally… free.
Yet when the familiar winds take me back, I know where they will carry me.
Back to you.
Back to the cage.
Back to the home etched with your name,
To the home that never was.
