The water beckoned me in with its clear azure waves; lichen and seaweed blanketing the ocean floor in sprawling fingers that reached out to grab those paddling in the shallows. They called out to me:
Come to us; come home.
I listened and said:
Yes, home, but this isn't quite it.
So I journeyed past the rock-strewn shores and over the boulders that grew into hills and sprouted into mountains, flying above them in a steel canister that promised to take everyone where they wanted to go, if only they knew. I departed the planes and journeyed to giant redwoods. Their felled neighbors created canopied escapes to shelter those who needed it. The squirrels and rabbits and bears and mice looked out at me and said:
Find your own home, this one is ours.
Yes. I know. But where?
I begged the ancient monoliths - who were filled with answers to questions we have not yet learned to ask - where to go, but they stayed silent except for the creaking melody that played in their rhythmic swinging through the jet stream above.
I walked some more, finding a bluff's end overlooking the chaotic daily handshake with which it greeted the boisterous water below. The clouds above dazzled in a pure white radiance that matched the burn of the sun itself. They smiled in their brilliance and laughed joyously as they asked:
Isn't this a beautiful home?
Yes, I answered, but I'm not sure it's mine.
Off into the very near, yet endless distance, I stood in a vast field of death, baked to an overdone crisp by the annually increasing heat. Time was as long as the deserts were wide; eternity stretching on. And despite the sand, and in the shadows of plants that found a way, lizards and snakes and blooming flowers said to me:
See, this isn't so bad, we make it work.
But still, I moved on. On into the fruiting palms of vibrant green, screaming of life and giving sustenance to those who needed it. Large fronds whistled in the breeze, lulling me to sleep and promising to keep me safe. I awoke rested, but aching for something more.
Miles and miles more added on to my trek, and I was once again surrounded by giants. Steel reached into the ether and promised to pierce the dome of our reality. They offered a solid reassurance:
Look at our mass, look at our prominence, look at our greatness.
So I looked, and I looked, and my eyes grew sore. They watered and pooled, blurring the tableau of man's creations until all I could see was a swirl of grey, and concrete, and brick, and glass.
The turning kaleidoscope of colors sent me rolling into the plains where I stood tall amongst the rows and rows of wheat. Their sway was like that of the trees, their whisper in harmony to the palms, the endless sea of tan so similar to the grains of the desert, the sky above as shockingly blue as the waters of the sea.
We have been home to so many, they assured, this can be home to you.
Yet there was no stillness; I could not feel stillness.
I closed my eyes, I drifted to the world within, battling through the darkest parts, grasping at the bits of light, and found a way to my heart. It was splitting down the middle; a line zigzagging through the center in a scrawl as wild as that of a child's drawing. I took it in both my hands and cupped it to my mouth as I whispered:
Please, tell me where.
Then I ripped it the rest of the way open, to take a look inside.
With my eyes open, my mind cleared, my journey recorded on the soles of my feet, I took a breath and called you.
"Please, can I come home?"
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