Return

When you're young, returning home after an extended trip feels like entering a new space, as if the house too was on vacation, and has rushed to settled back into its role as it hears you approach the door. The home, that cradle of comfort and reliance, has shifted in your absence. The house is empty, the hallway dark and everything quiet and still, the rooms being filled again with voices and footsteps. You aren't disappointed. You're charmed by the unexpected strangeness. Nothing physically has changed in the home. You've just forgotten familiarity, having become accustomed to brief stays in foreign places. Knowing that the sheen will soon dull, you walk through every room, and you turn on each light and look at the objects and their formations in the room in a curious way that will vanish with the scrub of morning light.