Home

There's no home anymore. I guess I realized that when I was eight years old--and that was more than half my life ago. I remember the endless nights screaming over and over again "I want to go home! Take me home" and the reply was always the same: "This is home now. This is home now. This is home now."

I never believed it.

So now, there is no home for me. The grass is just as green on either side and neither side is very green. That's not a bad thing of course. Just...part of it is brown, pale green, or covered in something else.

Right now I'm with Anthony...the closest to home I can get right now--a person. Which is all home really is. It's funny because I didn't talk to him for so long for reasons I won't put on here. If you know them, you know them, if you don't by this point, you never will. I'm glad I'm talking to him again, though. He never ceases to inspire writing with his music. Each time I'm around him, he plays something that starts the words flowing all over again.

It was his music that gave me the death of Aliya. It was his music that gave me the end of In Pursuit of Wind, so I guess I have him to thank for a lot. For being there when other people weren't. For staying and not pretending. Still, I don't regret what I did and he agrees that I shouldn't.

Anyhow, I guess it all reminds me of this time when I was very young. I can't even remember my brothers being around yet. It goes like this:

One day, when my mother was still somewhat of a mother and still a little bit human, she brought me home three cocoons. I watched and waited and it seemed to take forever. But one day, I came home and in place of the cocoons were two beautiful monarch butterflies. The third cocoon never hatched. I kept those two butterflies for a while. They lived on sugar water swabbed onto cotton. Just like with all things, I never wanted to let them go. But they were vibrant, alive, bright, and beautiful. The season was ending and I didn't want to see them die. So I did the only thing I could in order to make them eternal in my five or six-year-old mind. I opened the cage and let them fly.

I still see them flying away. And I remember crying at the thought of never seeing them again. And I remember smiling because I set them free. I guess what I'm saying is that in the end, to truly hold on and make life forever immortal, you must kill the reality and commit it to memory. In other words, set the butterflies free.

And freedom means no home except the wide, wide world. When there's nothing left to lose and nothing to gain but freedom again and freedom again.