home

The first place you live alone, away from your family, he said, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.

Home is not an answer to a question.

A body always returns to the place that shaped it. A body always returns to its ghosts.

“No offense, cousin, but even though you are from here, you are also not. I know you want to help, but you have only recently learned about any of this. You are not going to be the one to save us.”

Thus, for displaced people, the first question was always about time: When can I return?

As with the Westerner, the Easterner was never so bored as he was when on his own shores.

Not every house is haunted.

Surely the air your lungs first breathe matters. The language your ears first hear. The foods your nose first smells and your tongue first tastes. The soil you first crawl upon.

There are answers hiding in the white noise, in the heartbeat of a house.