“It's like you've finally found your home and you know it'll always be there,” my friend’s older sister said, not bothering to look away from the passing fields outside the car window. I wanted to respond that my home is my best friend. My home is a field of sunflowers and the big old oak tree at the edge of the woods. My home is laughter spilled carelessly into summer air. My home is the way my friends and I exist together, loudly and unapologetically. Home has never felt singular to me. It has never worn a ring or a white veiled dress. But instead I just thanked her for her input and turned to watch the rural farms blur into city roads blur into stop signs and red lights and traintracks.

“It’s having a person you can tell anything, a person you trust more than life itself,” my friend said, sitting cross-legged on my bed while we both avoided the homework waiting for us. I wanted to ask what makes that romantic. I share everything with my best friend. He is, at this point, an extension of my thinking. Sometimes I joke that he knows my reactions before I do. I tell my friends the thoughts I would normally disregard before they even finished forming in my mind. They have seen me unfiltered and stayed. If trust is the measurement, then I am already rich in it. But instead I smiled and told her I was glad she found her person. Then I reminded her we should probably get to work.

“It’s knowing someone will always be there for you, through the highs and lows. They can never leave. It’s like insurance. Heart insurance,” my mother said while we sat in the parked car, waiting for time to pass by. I wanted to say my friends have been there in the highs and lows too. I have held their grief and panic and stress. They have carried mine. Who decided permanence belongs exclusively to romance? “In sickness and in health, till death do us part.” Who decided those vows were reserved for priests and for kisses? I intend to stay in my friends lives. I intend to guide them if they need it. I trust they would do the same for me. Devotion does not require a wedding and a honeymoon. But instead, I let her keep talking, and the conversation turned to her marriage, and I let her words settle into their practiced, happy ending.

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet.”
“It’s like Odysseus and Penelope.”
“It’s like Jack and Rose.”
“It’s like all those love songs you hear on the radio.”

They say it as if the examples explain everything. I want to tell them it doesn’t make sense. If home is only one person, what happens if they have to leave? If forever is wedding bands and white picket fences, what happens when that has to end? Why must we gatekeep the language of devotion? Why is loyalty romanticized only when it comes home and kisses you on the mouth? 

Maybe romantic love is powerful. Maybe it is consuming. Maybe it is a gravity I have not yet felt.

But do not tell me my loves are smaller because they are quieter, do not tell me they are any less important because no priest ever ordained them.

i don't know who i am

nor do i think i ever will

but

i want to be so much

i want to be a poet,

carefully nurturing

then raising and sharing,

the sustenance of the soul.

i want to be a student,

learning and growing to

preparing for a future

in this cruel world.

i want to be a reader,

traversing strange worlds as

a brave hero or heroine

loved by all i've helped or protected.

i want to be a child,

with a heart big enough

to love and love

and never stop loving.

but most of all?

i want to be a person.

with all those faults and flaws

i want to be a person.

because i was exhausted and cranky
and it was too late in the week to be walking home
and because texas was threatening to rain all over us, especially me.

did i mention i was starving and i had gotten a bad test grade
and someone had spilled something suspiciously brown on my white shirt?

because this dog craved attention and because
my fidgeting adolescent paws begged me to do something.

because petting is said to be incredibly therapeutic. this dog wasn’t fluffy, or cute.
just a lonely, sad old doberman with no home.

sure, i worried about ticks and disease, but not close to enough to stop.

because i liked to trace the outline of the ear, of the soft cartilage it was made of.

because i wanted to ignore the questions of who would win and hypotheticals swirling around my skull.

because i could tell from the dog’s watery eyes that he was a thinker who didn’t want to think, like me.

because his barking was somehow beautiful and his fast swishing tail was unregulated by the
police or the government.

because chaos was everywhere, inside me and out, and i liked the shy glow of a small success.