A Home of Stones and Shadows

A Home of Stones and Shadows

The road back is longer than you remember.
Not in distance—
your feet know the way—
but in the weight.

You slown down before getting too close.
You tell yourself it’s just a house, just bricks,
just things that can be replaced.
But your hands are shaking.

You had imagined this moment.
But not like this.

The doorway, half-standing.
The smell—
smoke, dust, something else—
something that makes your throat close.

The kitchen wall is gone.
The table where your father taught you to read—
splintered.
A single shelf leans in the wreckage,
clutching at a broken plate like a hand refusing to let go.

You step inside, or what’s left of inside.
Here is where your child took his first steps.
Here is where your mother sat on quiet evenings,
threading a needle in the dim light.
Here is where you last laughed—
a real, full laugh—
before the sky split open,
before the world made it clear
your existence was negotiable.

A piece of fabric shifts in the wind.
You kneel. Pull it free.
A child’s shoe, too small now but—
no, you can’t leave it.
You close your fingers around it like a prayer.

Behind you, voices.
Neighbors returning to their own ghosts.
No one speaks at first.
Then, a woman says, too quietly,
"They say we have to leave."
Her face is unreadable, but her hands tremble.

Go?
Find another place to suffer?
Find another land to rebuild on?
Forget that your ancestors planted trees here,
that the stones beneath your feet
carry the weight of centuries?
Forget the street where your neighbors
once called your name,
where children ran past
with scraped knees and unbroken dreams?

But you are not leaving.

You drop your bag.
The things you carried, the things you salvaged:
A battered pan.
A photo of your grandmother, edges burned.
The shoe.

You clear some rubble to hammer tent stakes into soil
that still smells of ash.
Thread rope through cloth
as the wind wails through hollowed-out homes.
A tent rises in the middle of ruin.
Not a home. Not yet.
But a declaration.

Others come.
Someone lights a fire.
Not for warmth,
but for proof.
For memory.

You sit, hands in your lap,
feeling the dirt under your nails.
The world moves forward without you,
men in distant rooms
draw new lines on maps,
shift numbers on screens,
decide who gets to exist and who does not.

But you are still here.
That is the only truth that matters.

This is not joy.
This is not home.
This is not how it should be.

But this is survival.

And survival is where the next story begins.