Once upon a time...

There was there was a teenager who wanted to move away from home.
Because she was tired of where she lived, because she felt caged in by sameness.
Because every time she moved, the picture of 'home' in her mind changed
The collage of that word kept growing every few years

When she was four, 'home' was a little crayon drawing in her little mind
A tin roof... wooden walls... a long porch
With little squares around the sides to mark where one Grandma's house white house was and where the other Grandma's red house was.

Over the years, more papers got stapled next to the first drawing

A square boxy white house smudged in chalk
A watercolour of a long cream house hugged by poplars and grape vines and flowers.
A coloured pencil sketch of a sprawling lodge in the woods

The teenager was still waiting in that lodge when the word came she was moving again with her family
She could barely believe it
And she wondered very hard what her new home would look like

When she arrived, it was a whole new kind
She wanted to add it to the collage.
But she had left some of her art kits behind at each other home

So she stood in the back yard grass, and looked at it
And she stood on the front sidewalk, and looked at it
And she even looked at it from above, in satellite image on her parents' computer
And she didn't know how to put it on paper

Until she found a small camera at the store
And took a photo of her new home
From the red tiled roof to the breezy living room to the friendly neighbor houses leaning next to it.
And she printed out the photo and stapled it next to all her other homes

And then she took another photo
Of all her homes stapled together
And she hung that photo as a poster in every house she ever lived in after that.

The End