Homeseeking

by Karissa Chen

“We must always be brave and meet what scares us head-on, even if it is hard. But still, you must not forget who you are. You must always remain proud.”

Life was dynamic and vast, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to experience enough of it to feel satisfied, if she could die happy knowing she’d only gotten to rub up against the small corner of the world she lived in.

“Everything we’ve lived through has brought us to here. Me in this house, with Ronnie and Samson and Abi and Nicky. You and your daughters and your memories of Linyee. Changing the past wipes all of that away. I can’t do that, can you? We can only move forward.”

How he longed to live a synthesis of all the lives he had lived and not lived,

And I measure what they’re saying against what I know of the world, what I’ve seen and experienced with my own eyes, what I’ve learned about human nature and history. I don’t ingest words like I’m a hollow gourd.”

“Won’t publications like that get in trouble with the government?” Apa looked annoyed. “Is that a good reason not to tell the truth?

“Yes, she said we’d always find our way back to each other, no matter what happens. That there’s a thread drawn between us.”

Suchi knew now that home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t moments that could be pinned down. It was people, people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far-flung, your home was too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside you.

This is what is hardest. The not-knowing. The questions that can never be answered.