How to Return Home - Natalie Weiss

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards

Home, just as you left it, but still you’re shaken

Like walking into a museum somehow out of time

It’s all the same, except the girl in the hallway

Where she’s been and who she will ripen into

Your childhood’s on the other side of a sprawling divide

Too wide…

Take a silent breath

Hold in the change

Tell yourself you still live here

Take your bags upstairs

It’s the only way you’ll get through today

Count the hours…

Take a shower…

Wash yourself away…

The house is pulsing with an alien heartbeat

Was it always here, but you never listened?

It’s calling you to be the girl that you were way back then

Again…

Take a silent breath

Hold in the change

Tell yourself you still live here

Take your bags upstairs

Put away your clothes, take it nice and slow

Be their daughter

Nothing’s harder when nobody knows

How to return home

How to return home

And how to survive

There’s no written guidelines

How to go back

How to show up and unpack

How to show up

How to grow up

How to take a breath

Take a silent breath

Hold in the change

Tell yourself you still live here

Take your bags upstairs

You still share a name

But you’re not the same

You don’t fight it

You don’t hide it

It’s a whole new game of how to return home

How to return home

How to return home

How to return home

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards

Home just as you left it but still you’re shaken