Home Sweet Home

I left on a Tuesday.

My mother stood at the gate

longer than she needed to,

her hands still smelling of kitchen smoke

and everything I was leaving behind.

I told myself it was just distance.

That distance is nothing.

I lied.

The hostel walls have no memory of me.

No corner knows my name.

I make my bed the way she taught me

and feel the absence of her voice

checking if I did it right.

Lectures. Deadlines. Noise.

A city that does not slow down

for homesickness.

I slow down alone,

at night,

when the room gets quiet

and quiet feels too loud.

I have found friends —

the kind that become family

when family is far.

We laugh in borrowed kitchens,

share what little we have,

and pretend we are not all

missing somewhere.

But some evenings the sun sets

in the exact colour of home

and my chest does something

I have no word for yet.

I think of my elder brothers —

the way they tease me

like it costs them nothing,

the way they show up

when it costs them everything.

I think of Sunday mornings,

the smell of rice and palm oil

finding me before I find the kitchen.

I think of the noise I used to complain about —

the children outside,

the neighbor's television,

my brothers arguing over nothing.

Now I would give anything

for that nothing.

Love, I have learned,

is loudest in its absence.

You don't know what home sounds like

until you are somewhere

that doesn't sound like it.

But I am still going.

Still showing up to the life

I packed a bag for.

Carrying home in my chest

like a quiet passenger

that never gets off.

One day I will walk through that gate again.

My mother will be there —

same beautiful smile,

same eyes,

same love that never learned

how to be small.

And I will stand in the middle of it all —

the noise, the kitchen smoke,

the brothers, the laughter —

and I will not say a word.

Just breathe it in.

Home sweet home.

Adeyemi Olajumoke Ayomide

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Adeyemi Olajumoke A. is a student of English Language who writes poetry, essays, and children's stories in between classes and everyday life. Finding inspiration in the ordinary, she is often in a quiet corner reading or writing. Her work explores themes of waiting, home, faith, and the quiet battles people carry within themselves. She is still figuring life out, and writing remains the way she makes sense of the journey.