Home

Where is home? I wander around asking.

I own a worn out compass and I inked roads once traveled on pieces of paper.

I still search for home.

I think I know what home is.

It’s the place where the air would embrace you affectionately no matter how long you were away.

It isn’t always the land that scented the blood that flows through your veins.

Home is also not the place where you were always happy.

Home was the place that hurt you and broke you down.

It shattered you into a million pieces like shards of glass.

But it also pieced those shards back together and painted them in vibrant hues.

Set before the sunlight every scar of yours now emanates a beautiful glow.

I think I know what home is.

It’s those familiar sounds that chimed into a unique symphony that I long to hear once again.

And now I know why seashells found on the shore still whisper ballads once sung to them by the ocean.

Home is what I search for everywhere I go

Sometimes I search for it in food.

I long to taste it amidst foreign flavors.

Sometimes in language.

I long to hear those familiar words spoken in a foreign language.

And sometimes in people.

I long to see it in the spirit of people I meet in a foreign land.

Beautiful

“Mirror Mirror…….”

“You’re beautiful” it said.

“You’re gorgeous from head down to toe.” It once said.

Convinced by the conviction in its words she was never in doubt.

The present paints a painful picture.

Every reflection laughs mockingly.

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall, you once said I was beautiful”

“Beautiful? How could you ever be?”

It frightens her how perfection is the new norm.

It frightens her how perfection is so close within reach.

“Mirror,  Mirror on the wall, the next time we meet I’ll be beautiful”

“You better be.”

She sits there waiting at the clinic.

During her first visit she was told that she could be beautiful.

All she needed was just a little nip and tuck here and there.

She sits there with images of air brushed models staring down at her.

Digital beauty is cheap.

Meanwhile a billion dollar industry is readying its scalpels.

What price would you pay to rid yourself of insecurity?

Unfamiliar faces stare at her at work and at family gatherings.

Their voices are still familiar.

With translucent skin pulled tight.

The sheen makes you reminiscent of glossy pages in magazines.

Magazines that revealed “true beauty” page after page

through air brushed models that hid their age.

Beware ye who yearn to be forever young.

The fountain of eternal youth runs Botox.

Why didn’t anyone tell her that imperfection was indeed beautiful?

Why didn’t anyone tell her that her wrinkles were not rings on the bark of a tree?

Their count didn’t give her age.

Why didn’t anyone tell her that the constellations of the night sky were mirrored in her freckles?

Why didn’t anyone tell her that measurements didn’t make her?

Her infinite mind should never have been limited by finite numbers.

Finite numbers. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

It began with finite numbers shown at board meetings,

 Convinced directors would then increase the marketing budget.

Investments were made in superior editing software and models from the most sought after agencies.

Models who went under the knife to survive the competition.

Adverts covered every square inch of her life.

Magazines, billboards, newspapers, TV, the internet.

Sweetheart there’s no doubt why you can’t see that every square inch of you is beautiful.