You bubble over with excitement, anticipating the day you depart to your hometown for the first time in six months. You saved every coin and symbolic scrap of paper to be able to take a ride at nearly 40,000 feet, back to where you are rooted. Only to realize that your roots have been dug up by the universe. Now you are perpetually floating, not 40,000 feet up, but just above reach from your friends, families, and memories.

You are not tied anywhere. You are no happier being where you originated than you were back where you study. Is that home now? Do you decide to join the moon and asteroids? Call their spaces between the stars your abode?

You under-packed for the ten day stay. Spent most days lounging in your own sweat on the musty sofa, watching your dog make a nest out of his own paw prints. When you do talk to your family you realize not only how much they've changed, but how much you've changed. Everything physical seems less so. Slightly out of place, a bunch of puzzle pieces that don't quite fit.

Your bed, in that house your parents and sister live in, but not you, that bed is now impossible to dream in. Either you don't sleep or you have nightmares. You don't have a way of maneuvering the roads that you once new like the back of your hand. But new freckles appeared. When your parents and siblings return from their daily lives, they're too tired for you. You are no longer a part of that daily life, a life that cannot stop for you. Just another puzzle piece that doesn't fit. It floats.

Does that mean you didn't have a life to stop for them?

You got a menial job, so you can overpay for a condo or apartment that you share with too many people. You spent time tacking tapestries to the wall so that you could sink into the secondhand couches somewhat comfortably. When your roommate asks you for a favor they always say, "Are you at the house?" never "Are you home?" You registered to vote and maybe even got a drivers license for that state. You drink fermented grape juice on Tuesday nights with your roommate's boyfriend because what else is there to do but to live, even just barely. Somehow the drink tethers you, whether its to a place or your own emotions you aren't sure. Does that become your home? Inside of a bottle? You could be that cork that fell in, that perpetually floats in the glass vessel.

No.

You must make the whole world your home. Accept that you will float from place to place, between seas, trees, and stars. Just enjoy the flight.