Home

I remember a place, deep within my memory

Still just a small frame of a girl, this place was large at the time, to me.

The smells and sounds were different to what I smell and hear now,

The language spoken was different to the language I speak now.

But mostly it was a single bedroom, shared with my mama and sister,

Where the savory smell of grandma's cooking lingered.

In a house full of family members, if my memory is right, we shared a single bed, and snuggled every night.

She was my home.

* * *

And then it was just my sister and I

She left one morning, despite this daughter's tearful cry

She left her home, how brave she must be

would she call this new place home, even without me?

Soon a year passed by and I no longer cried, I quickly learned of a new kind of home, at my grandmother's side.

But Mama came back to get us, still just young girls

and brought us across the globe, into a whole new world.

The smells and sounds, the language we didn't know

this was to be our new home, a new country in which to grow.

And grow we did, we learned to conquer a place unknown

but within Mama and each other, we always felt home.

* * *

Life turned me into a grown woman, and though Mama is not near,

I seem to have found a new home---right here.

I lift my gaze now, many years later to children of my own

I have given them a place, I hope they will be able to call home.

I have given them a place from within they may conceive

It is a piece of me, of the places I have been, from the love I have received.

For a Mama I have learned, is not just a person

she is many places, and memories passed down for a reason.

Should they ever find themselves in a new world discovered,

perhaps a different language, as I once had to maneuver

For I have made sure they know, their world knows no bounds

when their memories take them back, to certain smells and sounds

They will know of a place, and soon they will learn

I am a home, they can always return.