Is a home still a home

If you no longer live in it?

I lose myself in photo albums

And memories and reveries in French

Nostalgic dreams redolent with the smell of baking bread

Convincing me I’m back home in Trinidad.

Is it me or has my skin lost some color since then?

My accent is a fading scar,

sometimes I think I'm the only one who knows its there

I'm not as colloquially witty as I used to be

I'd give anything to sound like the nine year old schoolgirl who had never heard of places like Montreal or Philadelphia

Who couldn't even fathom becoming fluent in French or Septa schedules

Who didn't understand that moving was a permanent goodbye of sorts

2512 Miles makes for a lengthy plane ride

For 7 hours I watched everything I had ever known shrink into oblivion

White dunes of snow replaced the white grains of sand

That line the shores of my childhood

The waves must have said goodbye when I wasn’t looking.

I landed in a language I had never heard before

“Quebec je me souviens”

I learned everything I will ever need to know

On your streets

Formed friendships that will last forever even if we never speak again

Tattooed with the invisible ink of experience

I move forward in life as a girl with complex backgrounds

Identity will always be my Achilles heel

Don't ask me where I'm from

I'm really not quite sure yet

But the stamps on my passport

And the disjointed sentence structure in all my tongues

Remind me that home can be the safe space you retreat to at the end of a long day

A warm cave in your mind

Filled with foreign memories and reveries

That smell like baking bread

And every place you have ever lost and found yourself