Rainbows & Bougainvilleas

You make home in the heart of

someone who helped mend the

one in you.

And you hope there is a home

in your heart too,

where they sit and sip love in

the afternoons.

You put all the things you love

in your new home,

rainbows and bougainvilleas;

songs that play with time;

journals that had never seen light.

And you hope that they do the same,

like stack old stories neatly

on the racks of your chest;

paint the walls with colors

that bend light away from the cracks,

press nostalgia

in the folds of your sighs.

But they find other homes

that they like more.

The light might fall better

over there.

The echoes might

be less shrill.

The door handles might

match their palm better and

the radio frequency that plays

their poems might be

finer in the wind.

So they move without

meaning to and you stay back

without wanting to and

it’s disconcerting to live in a home

so far from the one in you.

So you learn the transit, and

eventually decide to move too.

They leave some stuff back like

a moment of vulnerability.

You forget some things there,

like a day of laughter that your

stomach hadn’t been able to hold.

And you make peace with the

distance.

You learn to live in the home

they left behind.

You learn to save their leftover

love in an empty box of sweets

and go to the market alone and buy flowers for yourself.

You learn to sing along to the echoes and feel full at night.

You learn to sip love that you

poured yourself.

You learn to paint eyes every time

you feel unseen.

You learn to remember that

you were born in the home

you give to others, and

you must die there too.