Home

Home is not where i come from, It’s the places i have belonged to. The feeling of knowing.    Home is the log outside the yard where my grandfather would switch on the button to my imagination. How I would listen attentively to the stories he told me, and how my eyes would light up as the images came alive in my head.

Home is the place in my head where I sit and talk to myself about myself, about fleeting moments of inspiration,  about lines from books and poems and hymns I have memorized about boys with beautiful teeth and scruffy hair and the museum of their minds.

Home is Simphiwe Dana singing  “nyawo zam zondimela”. Is me  knowing the ground I walk on is my anchor. Home is remembering my feet, the places they have taken me to,  the love I have for walking. Home is the page,is  the investing of my entire being to the art of literature.

Home is my mother’s home cooked pap and cabbage. It’s the heated conversations I have with my sister about art, religion,  science,  politics and love. Home is the back and forth emails I send to my brother,  it is the comfortable silence that exists between us in the car.

Home is arriving in Joburg and find the nearest poetry session. Is arriving in Joburg and not wanting to make any of it home. Is arriving in Joburg and finding home in jazz lounges and in acoustic guitars. Is arriving in Joburg and wanting see more of the rest of the world.

Home is the therapy of rolling up a blunt. Home is escaping  this physical body and living in spirit. It’s leaving this body of matter and living within the breathes we take, its floating with the wind on a high parralel with the moon. Its my soul  in balance with the horizon and co existing in the sea and the sky. Home is with the clouds, the figures we liken them to,  the hopes that they are  loved ones looking down on us.

Home is growing up and realising that none of this is about us, it is growing up and finding refuge in melanin and in red wine and walking in the rain. Home is my father’s eyes, how everything about them,  reminded me of myself. Home is always being the quiet one at the dinner table.

Home is the inside of my mouth. The secrets it has swallowed. The laughter it has echoed.Home is the attitude in my lips. The blackness of them. The fire they have tasted, The lovers they have kissed. Home is meeting someone for the first time and feeling like you have known them for a lifetime. Home is that right there, It is this right here. Home is everywhere inside of you.