Home by Sonia Kurup
Home –
these words come from a place of longing more than they come from experience
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
And we’re just getting started.
I get pieces of hopes and wishes when I least expect it. I get a flash of a room of our own, with the comfort that comes with mess and belonging. I smell your hair. I hear your laugh. I taste your lips. I place the needle on the record player. I curl up on the couch with a book. You tickle me until I cry and plead surrender. We share water and skin and soap in the shower. I fall asleep with your arm resting over my waist. We play a game of tug-of-war with the blankets. We wake up at the same time in the middle of the night and marvel at each other and our luck for a few seconds before drifting back to sleep effortlessly; our bodies fit each other like perfect puzzle pieces. I nudge you to turn over when you’re snoring in my ear, you laugh and pull me closer. I would rather hear this than hear nothing at all.
I don’t know what our life together is going to look like. I just know that, already, it is better than what we have left behind. You and I have lived lives defined by our losses. We have nursed our wounds and let ourselves sink and wait for the relief of dying, only to bob back up and catch our breath, struggling. We know what it is to ask “why,” and wonder how this teeny tiny world had brought us the pain of a universe. When we hold each other, we don’t feel the jagged pieces.
Everything that has maimed you has made you all the more resilient. But still, I don’t want you to lose any more blood. I want to pull all of the glass out of you. I want to stitch you up, letting your skin and muscles weave back together. You kiss my scars each night, they fade more and more everyday. I would take all your pain, your sorrow and hold it so you wouldn't have to...and I know you would do the same.
Piece by piece, we'll collect ourselves together. With the remnants of our blood-stained glass, we will create beautiful windows where we gaze into the depths of each other, and little by little we will build our perfectly imperfect life.