Home is where you’re greeted with warmth when the outside is unbearably cold. A place where you feel centered and grounded after a long day at school that you can’t wait to be over. Kicking your shoes off in the mud room because you don’t feel obligated to put them in order. The feeling of knowing you have no homework tonight and the time is just simply yours. Home is sinking perfectly into the comfy living room couch, as you exhale and click the power button on the remote. It’s how your bed molds perfectly to your body when you lay down hearing each creak and crack in your old walls. When your mom texts you saying she went grocery shopping and is making dinner on your night off from your busy life. Home is when someone in your family says “let’s just stay in tonight”, and nobody is upset about it. It’s the naps you take when the pouring rain pulls you into a deep sleep. The fresh scent of laundry and the signature house smell you carry with you on your clothes. The stomping sounds of you running down the wooden stairs to be first on Christmas morning. Home is coming back from a long drive and the sight of your driveway instantly excites you to open your door. Home is a place to share with all the people you love but you know that in the end the home is yours. 

Home is not empty. It’s not an echoey place where furniture used to cover the room and is now just open without anything to be filled. Warm feelings turned to shivers as the outside cold carried to the inside. Where there used to be piles of shoes and mud tracks in the hall, there now are empty shoe racks and a garage that actually has been cleaned. The smooth grass you would roll in as a child has now been covered in “for sale” signs poking through your lawn and every memory you had. Though your living room couch remains, it no longer sinks the way you liked and needed it to after that long day of school. Instead, the couch feels firm and like something you don’t recognize as it waits for some stranger to use it. The sound of little feet stomping down the stairs are now just the sound of sharp high heels coming from a woman who only advertises your house, but doesn’t actually care about it. Home is not empty. Home is full. It’s very hard to share your home with someone new, but it’s even harder to forget the memories your home shared with all the people you love.