Home as we don’t know it.

Alex Chang
1 min readMay 24, 2018

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What is a home?

The place you were born in, or a place thousands of miles away where you were born anew

The place you were raised, or the place that raised you

Or could it be two or more places, like the continents of Europe, Asia, and North America

Shifting, colliding, bumping, subduing, morphing, intertwining, in a beautiful

Chaos.

Is it a feeling

The most riveting of kinds

That starts from deep within

With each breath and every heartbeat

Pulsing through and taking control of those stomach butterflies we don’t listen to

Enough.

A flurry of mixed emotions

Of memories, of sights and sounds, of tastes and laughter, of food and food and food

Of experiences

A silent contemplated answer to the question “what is home for you?”

Speaking of questions, the worst of all

Is “where are you from?”

A loaded question

With a million possibilities

But only one that you’re looking for.

Should I say where I was born?

Where I was raised?

Or where my parents were?

Or where I feel most comfortable now?

Do you just want me to confirm your preconceived notions of where I look like I’m from?

Perhaps.

Perhaps there’s a beauty in having just one home

It’s simpler that way

Answering questions might even be easier

But perhaps for us multi-cultured kids, we need to feel comfortable belonging to multiple worlds

It’s a home in itself

A place I call

The in between.

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Alex Chang

Chinese-Canadian Storyteller from Vancouver. Based in Germany. Potterhead. Musings/Poems explore Sustainability, Culture, and Unapologetic Kindness.