On Going Home

A bed of pine needles,
and a lamp in the window.

I bet it still smells like magnolias inside.
That doesn’t mean I’m coming in.

It’s not mine, it’s not ours anymore.
It belongs to the very next set of do-gooders.

Years of undusting and keeping things kosher have left it much colder.
More clean and less full of things.
More room for talking and less for secrets.

Maybe that’s better. Maybe that’s what I wanted.
Keep it sickly-sweet, sealed like the batched peach preserves in the back of the freezer.

I don’t know when,
I can’t say when I first noticed.

But nothing is different,
and everyone’s older.

Addi April is a published singer/songwriter originally from Houston, Texas. Now based out of Nashville, Tennessee, she is a lifelong creative and performer who currently splits her time and energy between the band she fronts with her fiancé, discovering and integrating new truths about the universe, and playing too much Baldur’s Gate 3.