Home for me meant that feeling that started when we were getting picked up before we were leaving. You could always tell, because every time we were leaving the trunk was filled so high that you couldn't see out the back window. Normally it was dog food and bags with leashes and spare jeans and sneakers. We always had clothes up there, but they were always different from the ones we wore in Ohio. At home they smelled like softener, and mud, and grass, and lemon water. The ones up there smelled like pine, and fire smoke, and sawdust, and clear, clean air.

We had a house, the outside was wood on half of it, the other grey with red trim. We'd always arrive to the airport, me and my brother would make my parents coffee. 1 sweetener for my dad, 3 for my mom, and me and my brother would double on the mocha packets to make hot chocolate thick as cornstarch and water. We’d get on the plane. And it was every time that we took off I’d feel excited all over again. And every time that we landed I would breathe in pine scented air and remember why I loved it. The drive home felt a million miles, but 10 minutes nonetheless. The trees were taller, greener, and stood straighter in the woods that love them. Each night that we arrived, we’d make a bowl of spaghetti, huge enough to feed for weeks. Somehow it all got eaten by the end of the week. That night we'd have a fire, and through hours of convincing we’d make s'mores. I always burnt my marshmallow on purpose the first time, the second time it would be perfectly golden brown. We'd always use too much chocolate, not enough graham cracker. And by the end of the night, we'd had spilled 1 Coke all over the ground, pulled out pieces of the rotting Adirondack chairs, pick the varnish out from under our nails from the chairs, and I'd end up wearing my father's oversized fuzzy fleece camo jacket. I’d crawl into my father's lap, my brother to my mother's, and we'd sit and listen to a loon serenading us somewhere in the distance. Our bay was always silence, the water lapping up against rocks gently, the trees swaying in the breeze invisible, the house creaking in the same wind. The fire would crackle, sending streams of sparks up into the air, burning a stick so I could write in charcoal on the bricks of blue stone that made the fire pit.

Eventually it would be too late, the moon was tired too. I'd walk up the stairs, up them by the light of the candle on the steps, the screen door waiting me. Up the stairs and to the bedroom of my parents change into pajamas that had to fit me once. They were normally pastel, colors of flowers that only existed in books. Then I’d walk across the hallway, to a room where a bed far too large for a little girl was waiting. A couch and a desk and the pine tree sitting on it. A carved table-fungus upon a fireplace that was too narrow in width and wide enough in length. I crawl into bed, and watch as my father dimmed the lights that look like dragon eyes that hang in the ceiling. I’d wake up each day to a blue sky, the smell of bacon drifting in the stagnant air the cabin. And every day I'd go back to sleep in that same room, or maybe the one with the bronze bed, or maybe the one where I could see the driveway and all the lights. And from that room I could look out, and I could see the cars in the driveway, and I could see the trees and all the faces made by the Stars.

That house was beautiful, but inside the walls it was simply old, the wood was old, Old and worn. The memories, though, would never fade, but the walls would crumble soon. New walls would come, replacing the ones that had been loved for so many years. They all knew they had to fix it, but their heart was not in it. We waited as long as we could, but no the house had to go. So I slept my last night with the Dragon Eyes, but I knew I was being watched over. The plans were drawn and beautiful, everything you could ever imagine in the house, a room all my own with the bookshelf I made myself. and so they knock down the old home to build the beautiful new house, a new house that would be filled with memories for years, and years, and years, and years. And so they took down the home to build the new house, but the new house isn’t there.

And I began to wait. And the snow began to fall where the house wasn't yet built, and it filled the pit where the house should be with snow. And so I’ll wait. And so the snow all melted into water, but then the frost came back and froze the whole thing to ice. And I’ll keep waiting. And then the sun came back and it melted the lake, and so now we have a lake where the house should be. And so I waited. And I stand by the lake where the house should be, and I see the lake where the house should be. And so I still wonder and wait. I stand waiting for a home, but I don't stand waiting for house. And so I’m waiting. Waiting for my home to come back.