You can never go home,
but you also never left. 
You are captured in the echo
of a resolving daguerreotype
hanging with the dust motes in suspension
of words and laughter and tears
that have been shared here before. 
You are etched into skin, in the scratch 
on the wall, the groove in the carpet
where your favorite chair once sat. 
You never left these halls, 
or perhaps they never left you. 
The result is the same:
when that door closes,
the memory as good as ghost will remain,
that intangible visitor whispering soft:  
it was good here. It never stopped. 
Home is not an idea that can be lost.
You are still in it
caught in twilight as the
sun bleeds from day to day
and so are they.

Melissa Close graduated from Emerson College in 2018 with a degree in Writing, Literature & Publishing. She is the author of Wandering & Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Wilde Press. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and has worked in the publishing industry in a variety of roles for seven years.