Creative Short Pieces

On Defining Home

‘Home’ found a new definition here. It is no longer walking with Mom down Main Street, bracing crisp fall air; watching autumn leaves do their shambolic dance down, down, down—seemingly desperate to meet the snow-covered ground.

Home became walking with Savannah and Ruby along Adam’s Boulevard in the stifling fall heat, bustling down frat row towards South Hoover, under the premise of taking cover in the shade of the tall oaks (but realistically to look at boys), and Trader Joe’s runs for cheap wine, Diet Coke, and Japanese fried rice. Home became an apartment on the 4th floor (4007b).

But that was back when Savannah still lived with us. Back before she graduated and started working for Target security. Back before management kicked us out to make room for more family housing. Back before one of us left a loaf of sourdough bread in the kitchen cabinet. Back before it molded. Back before we returned from summer vacation to find a sizeable fruit fly infestation.

4007b is not ours anymore; it belongs to new parents, young children, and thousands of ravenous fruit flies.

Home, now, is something new, and I think I am ok with that. Home, now, is just Ruby and me; Savannah left, and we stayed. Home, now, is the same building, but a different apartment on the 5th floor (5115b), where we’ll start and finish our senior year.

Yesterday, when we moved to the new unit, our hearts skipped a simultaneous beat when we saw the view of the downtown skyline. How different it was from our previous view of the 110 and Adam’s, which I have decided not to miss, aside from the homeless man who used to sit in the middle of the intersection and play the drums on the bottom of Home Depot buckets—I will surely miss him.

Tonight, we walked the two miles to Trader Joe’s and back. We put groceries away (cheap wine, Diet Coke, and Japanese fried rice) the same way we did in 4007b, the same way we used to with Savannah. We rub our wrists, which are red and indented from the paper shopping bags.

I look out our sliding glass door. What a strange thing to think that four years ago, I didn’t find these buildings or lights as exciting. I used to see boring, grey boxes, so unlike the one-story houses that make up my hometown. But that was back when ‘change’ felt like a personal vendetta; since then, ‘change’ and I have come to an agreement.

Then we sit, Ruby and I, on our tiled balcony, overlooking a city we’ve come to know better. The grey boxes occupy our minds and our conversation.

They lay within a steel and concrete kingdom. They are iron and polished stone. They are part of something bigger.

We envision workmen decades ago, building these shiny grey boxes from the ground up. How they began with their feet on the pavement, then went higher and higher, eventually grazing the sky with their hammers and nails. They were the masters of progress, work, and advancements. They saw the future.

As we take in these industrial statutes, we don’t see what they saw. We don’t just see purpose-built, operational buildings; we are young women, and we see sublimity. Because, as Ruby points out, these grey boxes contain beauty that they were never intended to contain.

Beauty. Such as the windows that are embedded within the grey boxes. Put there to serve a purpose—to provide natural light and ventilation, now each containing a little sliver of life. We gaze, eyes squinted, toward the windows.

Beauty. We admire their delicate glow and smile softly at the stark silhouette of strangers against the warmth. Though we don’t know if it is an office building, an apartment building, or both, we try to decipher each window’s sliver.

Beauty. We imagine the silhouettes making important phone calls, typing proposals on keyboards (due by EOD), moving furniture to dance in their living rooms, listening to old vinyls (the people in this building definitely, undoubtedly have record players) while sipping strong old-fashioneds.

Or that they’re staring back at us, noticing the beauty of our building, commenting on the glow from our apartment window, noting the contrast of our silhouettes—conceiving our little sliver of life.

Beauty. I take a mental step back and regard the beams of metal, the repeated stacks of T’s and L’s that go all the way up to the tippy top of the building. They balance on each other to make boxes that perfect, clean, even.

How beautiful it is to think that things so mundane, like structures built for professionals and working people, skyscrapers meant to harbor dull, 9-5 workers, can paint such a pretty picture in the sky.

It is as if, without even trying, humans create beauty, or maybe it is just that, without even trying, we find it.

On Los Angeles

I see the way the city lights pollute the air. They stick to the nitrogen and oxygen and suck the life out of them. The lights taint them and spread their hue, infecting the air with neon. And while I know these city lights pull the wool over our eyes, hiding us from the truth of the stars beyond, I can’t help but see their beauty. Because they are beautiful, in a sad, earth-destroying kind of way; the way they bounce from building to building, playing tag in a vast sea of atoms. I am not one to avert my gaze and pretend I don’t see how lovely they are. It is not my duty to humble them—there are higher powers that do that for me. Rain clouds visit and dampen the streets and the city lights; they muffle the luminance so as to say, “I am still bigger, still mightier than you.” Puddles plunder the gravel and steal each ounce of space until the ground belongs to the rain and clouds. But the city lights work hard to shine in their home, and they don’t enjoy being veiled. So, as the clouds shroud the neon glow, the city lights shimmy out from under and play in the puddles, and raindrops bounce, reflect, expand. The rain and clouds can only do so much amidst a force so resilient. So come tomorrow, puddles will shrivel and part ways with the cracks in the concrete. The clouds will whisper goodbyes to the skyscrapers and the people below, shake hands with the city lights, and promise to return soon; it is a battle that will forever be fought. I don’t care who wins, so long as I get to watch.