No Place Like Home
by
Amanda Bejjani
Poetry &
Prose Poetry/Lyric Essay
Prologue
Until my
ninth year of life I was never out of place, never an outsider. I belonged. I
had a Home. When I was ten my family was forced to leave; the looming beast of
war made people nervous, scared, cruel. We couldn’t go back. I was lost. I lost
myself in the airports, must have gotten on a return flight or never left at
all. I was lost from myself miles from Home. But Home was still there, there
waiting, arms out-stretched, teary-eyed, waiting to be returned to one day. Now
at 18 I neither belong where I came from or where I am, but I’m not lost
anymore, just don’t belong. Home has spread itself across the world, all my
people, unrelated kin, all gone, nothing left to call Home, just a tattered
flag with one white star in a red triangle to trigger a feeling that’s almost
become a stranger, a taste of something that was never mine. Where I am has
become familiar, comfortable, I found my voice again, but there’s no belonging
here, no possession or claims on each other’s loyalty. I could go anywhere.
But. Could a Man be everything everywhere has failed to be? Be steady, be mine,
be belonging, be forever; my childhood and future in one place, a place that
will go with me anyplace I go. But. I’m just passing through.
Poppies
The Stuff of
Spring
Of sweet
rainy melodies that echo the songs of birds
They
brightened even the brownest of fields
With
brilliant red hues
In the
bright sunlight
The Honey in
the fresh Milk of April
The Earth
smiling back at laughing children
And as the
Sun warmed everything into Summer
They became
the precious stones
Woven into
little girls jewelry
Into Ties
that bound the wrists of friends
Into Crowns
that graced the heads of Innocence
Poppies.
We picked
them, wild and carefree, in the fields
Carefully parted
a small piece of each stem so
We could
weave then one through another
Just as our
hearts were woven together,
Inseparable!
We swore.
How could a
Poppy, a Life
So beautiful
Ever wilt
and fall apart?
But.
Winter came
A Winter
that would last years…
A Taxi
Ride
“Where is
Daddy?”
“They took
him...they’ll be sending him away soon, and we’ll have to leave too.”
“When will
we come back?”
“I don’t
know…”
And I knew
This wasn’t
leaving for the summer to see Grandparents
“How could
anyone not like my Daddy?”
He is the
best of men.
And there
were Tears
Tears in the
Taxi
Tears at the
airport
As our Home
gathered to say goodbye
To send
their love, their thanks
For
everything he gave them
And then
it’s us
My Mother,
my Brother, me
And all I
can think about is Laughter and Tears
The Laughter
of spring and summer and how
Winter
turned it to Tears
I am Lost
I withdrew. I
shut out the real world, the world that had torn me from my Home, from the
family of my heart and the streets and arms that raised me. I didn’t know what
to make of the different people and places that I was thrown into so I created
my own; my own intricate web of a world, a merging, a weaving of the everyday
with the fantasies of books and my imagination. The next four years are like an
impressionist painting. A dark blur of feelings and images, not much that is
solid. I spent most of my waking hours in my imaginary world; it quickly
developed its wing s and soared, feeding off of everything I read and watched
and knew, a world of Love and Cruelty, of Honor and Betrayal. There is only one
ever-clear image throughout, my cousin, my friend, who put up with me, even liked me I think,
despite my stubborn insistence to shut almost everyone out, to despise
everything foreign to me.
A Fantasy
A Dark Blur
of a Life
A few Kind
touches, bright brushstrokes
But.
I am
Found
Two glowing
voices, approaching, flickering, faintly at first; cautiously I let them come
closer. They’re singing, illuminating everything around them, they persist,
closer and closer, until I finally let them in, and without warning my spirit
was ignited. It found a voice, no, three voices. They were crazy, I needed
crazy, they were two sisters, we became three, my heart started to feel like it
had kin, kindred hearts. We went on Hobbit picnics and adventures together,
hiked up the blue river, put up the tire swing in their tree. We did it all
together. We shared our minds. We could as much think something as say it when
we were together. They convinced me, at least a little, that the real world
could be worth living in. But. A day came when I was not only a little
convinced that the world could be worth living in. A Day came when I started to
believe that it could be even better than the best of my fantasies. I was a few
months past 16…
Would You
Go With Me?
“Hypothetically,
if you could, would you go with me?”
“Hypothetically,
yes.”
He touched
my face
Like he was
painting every detail himself
Onto a
parchment
Of warm
rippling air
He kissed
me, my First,
In a grove
of pines
It was like
closing my eyes when I had swung as high as I could on a swing set and
Feeling like
I was flying
Except with
him
The feeling
didn’t fade when I opened them
His poetry,
his letters, were
Enchantment
He
challenged me
Inspired me
to better
At
everything I did
But Most
wonderful
His Love
felt like Home
I belonged
He was mine,
and I wanted to be his
He was
beyond anyone I had ever known
But with the
greatest joy comes the greatest pain
When I thought
I couldn’t get any happier
It fell
apart
Severed by
distance and silence
Out of our
control
We swore
We would
wait for each other
Even if it
took years
But I fell
apart for the second time in my life
It was not
only tears that ran, but blood
But I had
felt what it was like to be Home
And I
wouldn’t give it up for the world
From Tis
Snowing again, written that winter:
White the
lost Creature
As in
flight, in search, in sadness
Or in love,
in awe, in madness
She wonders
lonely roads
For a wild
Will and a deep Desire
Drive her.
The End??
Tis God who
knows
And Time who
will tell,
But Dreams
whisper
“Your Heart,
your Home, your Love…”
Et mon Amant Murmure
“Tu mihi Amanda.”
A Bad
Dream
A year and a
half passes with not a word exchanged between us. Writing was the solace of my
heart. He was my muse. I was broken but unbendable. I lived. But I didn’t feel
completely alive. I had never been as alive as he made me. It was an age. It
was the eve of my eighteenth birthday. I couldn’t help but wonder, was he just
another of my fantasies? Just me refusing to face reality again and living in
my own world? He was so good, too good to be true? I didn’t sleep that night. I
sent him a message that morning.
“There’s a
wild, wild whisper blowin in the wind, callin out my name like a long lost
friend.”
It was a
reference to the love story of Jane Eyre which we both knew well.
But he was
already here.
And unlike
my childhood Home, he had not changed with time.
My True
Home
It was real,
Our Love, Unmovable, Irrepressible, Irresistible, he was already here. And it
seemed as if the past year and a half were not but the bad dreams of a long
night and morning had finally come. And now we will never let ourselves be
parted again. It is getting close to a year since that day and we are stronger
than ever, and yet I wonder, can even a goodhearted man be my Home? Unfailing? Forever?
And I know that though this may be the closest I will ever come to a Home on
earth I’m still only passing through, and the Only Reason I made it this far, The
One who picked me up when I fell apart and there was no one to turn to, The
Only Reason I came back to my lover whole
Is Divine
Thee Divine
And His
promise is
Infinite
Unchanging
As Himself
“I go to
prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a
place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I
am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and
the way you know.”
~The Divine Christ
My true Home
will never be this Earth
I’ve been
looking in the wrong places my whole life
He’s someone
just a bit grander than all this
Who’s
waiting for me
To come Home
On a
Thunder Storm
Fury of the
skies
Trembles my
Soul
Love in
disguise
Moves beyond
control
My God, my
Lord
Why do you
hide from me?
How can I
ford
This
seething Sea
Of storming
Clouds and raging Stars?
For I feel
Your Thunder in my Bones
Calling the
Spirit bound by their Bars.
My Spirit,
for You, ever pines and moans
In Melodies
too deep for Words
In Harmony
with the whole of the Earth
My Blood is
stirred, my Heart has heard
The Voice
that bound me from my Birth
Golden-white
wakes the Sky;
Jagged Flame
claims my Breath;
Rampant
Power roused by your Eye
Reveals to
me my jaded Soul,
Lifts it
from the Throes of Death
My Soul’s
lain bare
To Your
redeeming Rain
With
relentless Care
Comes Purity
through Pain
On the
pulsing Street
Rain-streaked
Tears
In the
living Beat
Your Love I
hear
Your Waters
envelop me
I sense You ever
near
What can Man
do to me?
Whom shall I
fear?
