To the Person Who Might Feel Like Home
to someone I may have already passed
I don’t know who you are yet.
Sometimes I wonder if I have already passed you somewhere without noticing.
Maybe we stood in the same line for coffee once.
Maybe we walked under the same rain.
Maybe you are living an ordinary day somewhere while I am here wondering whether someone like you exists at all.
I don’t think I am waiting for anything extraordinary.
I have never needed someone to arrive and change my entire life.
I think I am waiting for something much quieter.
Someone beside whom I do not have to listen to myself so carefully.
Someone who does not make me wonder whether I said too much, moved too close, cared too obviously.
I want to know what it feels like to stop editing myself in the presence of another person.
There are parts of me that have spent years learning how to remain unnoticed.
They are not dramatic parts.
They do not ask to be saved.
They simply grew accustomed to silence.
If we ever meet, I hope you do not try to open them all at once.
Just stay nearby.
Maybe one day I will realize the door has been open for a while.
And perhaps that is what home will mean to me.
Not a place.
Not a promise.
Just the strange moment when I look at someone and realize there is nowhere inside myself I still need to hide.
