Hiraeth

I wrote this several years ago and wanted to finally share it. It's not perfect, but I hope you enjoy it anyway...

Hiraeth (N.) A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

I peer down the long hallway. The same hallway I grew up knowing as a safe space. A space I could laugh, play, and walk down with your hand in mine. The smell, I can’t describe but catch traces of every so often in unexpected places. The glow from the lights above, the sunshine spilling in from the window on the door. Both splashing into each other and bouncing off the jigsaw puzzles that had been meticulously put together, glued, and hung on any available wall space. The puzzles, the tenants may have changed throughout the times, but the feelings of that place did not, while you were there.

It has been more years than I can exactly remember, the last time I walked that hallway, smelled its scent, and had my whole self bathed in the artificial and natural light that so perfectly converged wrapping me up in its familiar embrace. Even if I did go back now it wouldn’t be quite the same.

The hand that once held mine, leading me down that hallway, has long since been out of earthly reach. The smell is likely not the same as I remember. No faces to recognize. You, no longer there to greet us at the door and hug us one by one as we step over the threshold into that familiar, loving space.

Every now and then, I dream of that hallway and your apartment as it used to be. It looks how it should, but there is no smell, and the light isn’t the same-not the warm glow, more a gray shadowed emptiness. I’m always looking for something. I don’t know what it is, and I never find it. Sometimes your apartment is empty, other times it is filled with all your belongings. I always search for that unknown object.

I hold those dreams, new memories, close to my heart and think of them often; especially when you visit me. You’re not always there, yet when you are I know it is really you. I cherish those dreams when the portal to the spirit realm is opened, and you appear to me.

You never say anything. You don’t need to. Just seeing you exactly how you were is enough. We do share hugs and even in a dream I can truly feel them.

I don’t know if I will ever find what I am looking for or even know what it is. If I do find it, I hope I still dream of that place, that hallway, your apartment. My dreams don’t do it justice, yet that and the memories are all I have left of it.

And maybe, what I am looking for isn’t an object, but rather a feeling of what used to be. A feeling that I can remember, a place that I have pictures of, yet something that I won’t know, not ever again.