What I carried.

I did not carry furniture

or the walls I grew up in.

I carried smaller things,

my name,

my heritage,

my language,

the way my mother cooked my favorite meal

the way my father folded clothes

like they mattered.

I carried songs

that no one here can understand,

and recipes,

without the ingredients that pull it together.

They say I left my home behind,

But a person can leave home,

Home cannot leave the person.

It lives in the way I speak,

in the stories I repeat,

In the small moments

when I remember who I am.

I did not lose my home.

I learned how to carry it.

- ishaani shahi