The Home Inside My Chest

I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry for real love

Not the kind that’s made on TV or bought on Valentine’s Day

And definitely not the kind that demands to be seen, defiantly yelling into the void in hollow desperation

I want the kind of love that only I can notice looking back

The kind I’ve unknowingly given myself all along

Even when my heart was breaking into a million pieces

The kind waiting for me in the warmth of clean sheets

Where I’ve wondered time and time again if I’ll ever be happy again

The kind that pours itself into a mug alongside those little sayings I read every time

To become a plain old cup of tea when my body aches for simple medicine

The kind that comes from putting my hands in soil when nothing else makes sense to me

The garden grows regardless

Showing me what’s realer and more resilient than my suffering

The kind that hides in a quiet corner of the woods by the bay

Where a previous stranger’s seat of stones invites me to watch the ducks for a while and remember to laugh

It’s the kind of love I notice and recall was always there for me

Supporting every step of my way

Trying to get my attention ever so subtly and gently

To let me know it never stopped in its pursuit of my heart

Quietly leading me right back to where I belonged from the beginning

The home inside my chest

So I’ll open the shutters and clean the sheets

I’ll make a cup of tea, read its sayings, and then repeat

I’ll plant my garden and help it to grow

I’ll smile at the stranger whose heart I might never know

And after all of this, if I’m still not happy

I’ll remember these words that I wrote while I had me