The Place I Never Want to Visit

rain on the glass pane—
inside, the past brewing slow,
still, the kettle hums

—

There’s no country I refuse to visit.
No city I’ve blacklisted, no border I’m unwilling to cross.
I’ll sleep in stations.
Eat soup from plastic.
Get lost on roads with no names.

But there is one place I avoid—
and it’s closer than any of that.
More familiar.
More dangerous.

It’s home.
Not the one with a mailing address,
but the version of home that lives in memory.
The one where I felt like a shadow of myself
long before I had a name for what that meant.

—

The Room You Outgrow But Still Remember

I don’t want to go back to the person I was in that version of home.
Where everything was quiet, but nothing was peaceful.
Where the light never quite reached the corners.
Where I learned how to fold myself small to fit into the shape someone else expected of me.

That place taught me how to endure.
How to disappear politely.
How to smile with my hands clenched behind my back.

But endurance is not identity.
And disappearing is not love.

I left that place not with a suitcase,
but with a slow kind of grief—
the grief that comes from realizing
the walls you leaned on were never meant to support you.
They were meant to keep you in.

—

The Ghosts You Still Carry

Sometimes, even now,
a smell or a sentence will pull me back.
A train station at dusk.
The sound of slippers on tile.
A certain kind of silence in someone’s voice.

And suddenly, I’m there again—
in the house I no longer live in,
wearing a version of myself I thought I’d thrown away.
The self that apologized for wanting softness.
The self that mistook control for care.

But I don’t stay.
Not anymore.
I nod to the memory,
thank it for what it taught me,
and step forward.

Because I’ve learned that not all homes are places you’re meant to return to.
Some are just rooms you survive long enough to leave.

—

The Murmur of Growth

People talk about healing like it’s a destination.
But I think it’s more like becoming fluent in a new language
while still dreaming in the old one.

You don’t unfeel what shaped you.
You just learn to feel it with softer hands.
You learn to build something that doesn’t resemble what broke you.

And maybe that’s the real kind of home—
not a return to safety,
but a slow, deliberate creation of peace
in the shape of your own voice.

—

Wabi-Sabi and the Unvisited Room

Wabi-sabi teaches us that beauty is not in the unbroken,
but in what continues despite the break.
It reminds us:

• There is no shame in leaving a place that loved you badly.
• Some things must end so that you can begin.
• Growth is not loud. Sometimes it looks like walking away.
• Even cracked foundations can become art, if you build with intention.

—

So when people ask what place I never want to visit,
I don’t name a country or a war zone or a forgotten town.
I name that version of home—
the one where I was not allowed to be whole.
The one where I learned to disappear.

And I say,
I will not go back there.

Because I have made something better.
Not perfect.
Not always steady.
But mine.

And that, I think,
is the only return that matters.