Walls that did not contain a home By

Walls that did not contain a home By Amna Farooqi

You walk through the familiar front door of the place you called home for so long, and you see it
perhaps for the first time in your life:
The haphazard rows of shoes falling over each other by the door, yet you hear no conversation, no
Quiet chatter of a full home.. You can see the dirty dishes littered with the remains of dinner, but they each have the remains of different meals on them, each eaten at a different time, and you’re well acquainted with the stains on the wall, but fail to remember any charming anecdote of how they came

Illustrated By Rayyan Khan

To be. Orange light leaks out under the doors of closed bedrooms, overflowing into the hallway just enough to lighten the shadows and turn them warm, but it’s only the bedrooms that are lit. Almost as if every inhabitant of this house had an aversion to each other’s company. The quiet realization washes over you; it’s not the realization of a new and foreign epiphany, but that of a bygone conclusion, of a glaringly obvious fact, and it changes nothing, and it changes everything Simultaneously, it is akin to both being plunged into icy water and being told the sky is blue. You always knew it, somewhere in the untouched depths of your mind, but now you see it sharply against the muted dark. Not a single member of this household truly lives here; it’s simply the roof
under which they sleep each night. Its where they reside and where they find all their belongings, but
none of them are truly alive within these walls. They save the pleasures of being alive for more
worthy haunts.
You realize not a single resident of your home knows you- and perhaps you don’t truly know them
either- you’re guilty of it too, you’ve made a home amongst friends and acquaintances. You've made
your home amongst the warm, worn familiarity of secrets once shared, of gestures long forgotten,
amongst memories and jokes with lost contexts, in the comfortable silence of those you love, and in
the predictability of knowing someone as well as you know yourself. Some part of you always knew
this was infinitely more alive amongst the company you chose yourself, yet you still feel that the
realization of this should be shocking, and you still mourn the home you pretended you had. It should change
something, it should be more eminent, but as the fact stands, it’s simply eight pm on a Tuesday.