POETRY

Οἶκος

What is home?
A warm hearth filled with golden light,
or a black void brimming with screams?
Either way, both are a home.
To everyone in the crowd
that is this world,
at least one is a home.
No matter the hearth,
whether it is burning or put out,
the fire warms one home,
whereas the smoke chokes the other.
One is bursting with smiles and laughter,
but under it all
lie vicious intents
and poisonous thoughts.
And one where no one dares to speak,
they still care.
Where in one the flower gets replaced,
the other remains standing, alive,
on just the hope lingering in the air.
That one day,
both homes will have feet returning,
walls echoing,
and the past finally slipping away
to haunt again
Author's Note Have you ever wondered if everyone has the same description of home? For me it's my poems; for Odysseus it was Penelope and Telemachus; for Patroclus it was Achilles. Notice how not one answer is a place with walls and a ceiling. That is what this poem tries to represent — the duality of home, and a question upon the widely accepted definition of it that I refuse to accept.
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About the Author Phthia Moira The Emerald Heights World School, Indore · India

Phthia Moira is a writer from The Emerald Heights World School in Indore, India. Her work draws on Greek myth and its stories of love between figures the world kept apart.

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