The Stray

Written for the THCC Staycation 2025 - apologies in advance for the many inside jokes.

I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home here. That’s true on the big and little levels. 

Any homes I may have had have blown away. The places that shaped my accent are hundreds of miles apart with very little to say to each other, so there’s not really anywhere with a gap in my shape. 

I think it’s why I get this feeling in my chest when I meet someone who’s just from one place. They’ve seen all the trees grow tall, the buildings built up, they know who they went to elementary school with, or it is primary school, and there it is, a reminder that I’m not home. 

Their roots are deep, and mine have dried up like dehydrated octopus tentacles that really aren’t much use to anyone. 

But I think I’m still flourishing, like an air plant, so how can that be? 

Well, if I try to capture home, or what makes my heart feel like it’s coming down like an airplane to land, there is a certain silver river that comes to mind. It flows behind my grandparents home in one of the neighbourhoods I grew up in, a surprising piece of evidence that my childhood actually happened.

That river looks a bit like how the Thames looks on a cloudy day. And watching it makes me feel so strangely like I belong in this foreign land, feeling like the me then and now match, relishing the moment of peace where no one knows which accent I have and can’t tell if I’m from London, or Derbyshire, or Maryland or California or South Africa. I’m just an anonymous person who nearly makes the cut, up until... aluminum comes up. 

So maybe home isn’t a place but an activity? Maybe it’s driving fast down the motorway at 2am, recalling the moments my teenage self felt free, mirrored by my adult self who rarely drives, reminded what it’s like to let tomorrow hold its own worries.

Home, maybe, binds my life together into something that makes sense, reminiscent scenes my soul responds to whether I’m 8, or 17 or 26 (although I’m 27 now). 

Maybe it’s feeling whole, or feeling like I’m inside of a story that’s still being told. Maybe it’s sitting in someone’s kitchen while they mend my overalls, or celebrating someone else’s breakthrough my heart’s bound to from months of "we ask" and "we hope, God," moments where I’m interwoven into your stories. 

So, yes, my bones do feel like they were designed to abide by old oak trees, and I feel strangely prideful to see black-eyed-susans or blue crabs that capture Maryland’s beauty. I can’t help but wonder if my eyes were designed to behold a Californian sunset, or my soul to sneak into a hot tub and wonder if the palmtree-stamped sky is heaven. And I love, really relish the rainy days that sprout up many complaints, while I take up space on the pavement (or is it sidewalk) because London feels like a village of 3000 instead of a dystopia of millions, who are all hiding away like logical people while I’m in the rain. 

Home doesn’t come from a common accent anymore, I’m not even sure I could find one if I tried. I think now it’s waving hi to someone in a cafe, or in Tesco, or let’s be honest, Lidl. Translating memories into poetic offerings because Jesus made my patchwork life beautiful. 

I’m an exile by choice, but an exile nonetheless as a wise woman once said, so I’m learning to embrace feeling like an alien in a foreign land. Repenting of the expectation of welcome in every country I stand in. Rejoicing in the moments my sojourning soul knits to someone for a moment, an instant, and I become real and not just a tumbleweed. 

So there’s not a resolution really, in finally feeling at home. It’s more that I’m resigning to the concept of it all. Defining family and home and belonging to something that more resembles a Mexican Santa at Bengali Christian Fellowship, and bonding with others not because they share my freckles or dark hair or eyelids, but because of something much deeper, inspiring more loyalty, braiding us together through the words of our testimonies, 

That feels like home. That’s where I feel safe. Living like a well-fed, well-loved, sojourning stray.