Never Home.

This world has never felt like home

But I have spent the entirety of my time here trying to make it feel that way

I pour my soul into words or canvas and I hang them up on the walls around me

I go searching - almost desperately - for someone who struggles in the same ways as I do

I am always coming up empty handed

Always grasping for the air I expel from my lungs

Always wanting something more - something different...

How am I supposed to live the life I know was made for me when every moment of the day and night - I am fighting to stay alive

My body - the only home I have here - fights against me.

I bleed on the inside. I scar on the outside.

Fresh bruises come from fighting my own ghost

But I am not dead yet..

Home is a bitter conquest

And perhaps home is something we never find,

Something we can never make...

Perhaps home is simply the treasure buried in our chest, and the subtle thumping of the heart that keeps us here.

I strive to be so much more than I am,

Yet I am only ever exactly this - precisely me.

I do not know how to tame the hunger in my belly or the thirst in my soul,

All I know is here and now

All I know is that home has never gotten more real, never been closer, never manifested in any place besides my dreams.

I am the builder and the demolitionist.

I am the hope and the sorrow.

I am the home and orphan.

I belong everywhere I am, and I belong nowhere.

I am a wanderess and a wonderer.

This world has never felt like home,

And my hands are tired of grasping for the air I've expelled.

Tonight I will rest, I will let my body know that she is loved, even if she never loves me back.

Tonight I will live as if life has never betrayed me.

-AshleyAnne