Coming Home

I just got home after housesitting for two weeks and interviewing for a job five hours away. As I unpack my car and enter a house I have called home, Zele, my cat, meows and makes her presence known. In her affection, she asks, "Where have you been?" Even though she was fed loyally by my housemate, she looks so tiny, rumpled, unloved...So does the house.
Perhaps it's me.
How much am I what I see?
I crave this house- the dusty brick walls, the natural light and the humid air flowing through the open windows. I crave physical home. Carve space for heart and hearth.
On my drive back from Kalamzoo, I sang with Chris Purenka-a song writer/ singer. She has great songs for being angry, and at 7 am, it was wonderful to be angry in my car, with the windows down. Singing my anger brings me back to my body- to the fact that broken relationship is broken body. To my touch with Fady- to the touch that was soooooo beautiful and it was ours.
How he loved me doesn't just evaporate, it is ripped out of me. Time is irrelevant. It still hurts- having my insides ripped out- and I curl up in soft tears and hot words.
It feels good to be still. Perhaps that's all I know right now- stillness. I sit on the front porch with Zele lounging on a chair next to me. Bags to unpack, essays to write, emails to attend... all await me. But here I am, in the time before all this returning begins. In the time just for me, and my cat, and the lazy afternoon humidity.
It is hard to just sit. I am not good at it! I find similar renewal in running and swimming, but it is not the same as pausing. I lean back and rest my head on the rough brick wall.