No Homeland but Here | Jessica Holme

They arrived carrying winds, war-silenced and the ache of departure

Grandparents who surrendered

Names,

Dishes,

Dances,

Trying to fold themselves into a country already looking past them.

and yet Love, that stubborn architect, insisted on building anyway:

A German Jew’s daughter and a Caribbean man

finding one another in the narrow space the world allowed.

In each morning tea I summon their shadows,

steam lifting like half-remembered stories,

Their values;

Connection,

Persistence,

A refusal of erasure

filter quietly into the present moment

as I reach for your small, certain hand.

For now, you will hold my hand as we go back though the woodland path

Two wondering souls in charge of each other

One to show you this new world

and the other to show this world is still new

Dappled light crosses pure path, and a game of living is set with the light and shadows

the world, so often hurried past, slows itself around you

Light

Dark

Light

Although I like to drink my tea in silence

it is a rarity now I have you

the steam is usually gone

the tea bag has somehow made a small pond in my cup

Not too dissimilar to the one on the woodland’s edge!

But you want me to see your dances, all the things you have seen and found in this new

world.

My adventurer

My Storyteller

My dreamer

I hold a quiet and deliberate hope for you that steeps more than my forgotten tea.

I hope your future opens wide, unconstrained by the shadows of ours

I hope that you inherit courage without inheriting the wounds:

I hope the world meets you with fairness it once withheld from them,

and that you answer it with curiosity rather than fear.

Let tenderness be your measure of strength,

and connection the ground on which you stand.

If storms arrive (and they will)

may you remember the lineage of resilience behind your name.

Know that you are loved without condition,

and that your story is not confined to the stories that came before it

Walk forward with the knowledge

that you were made from perseverance

and the will to begin again.

To those who will come after,

Descendants imagined but not yet breathing.

Understand that you were present in every ritual of our days;

in each cup of tea cooling untouched.

In each woodland step,

in each inherited silence softened by love.

You are the horizon none of us could fully see,

but all of us trusted would arrive.

Carry the values that steadied us; refine them as the world requires

Let love be the homeland you construct for yourselves,

and when you are dapple jumping in the dark, know that there is love for you here.

Keep humanity as your compass that draws you back to one another.

May your lives grow from what we built,

and grow beyond it with equal grace.

Hold fast to what nourishes; release what confines

and may the future be gentler, larger, brighter

because we loved you.

And because you choose love

Every

Single

Time

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Jessica is a Creative Writing master’s student documenting her journey through the craft of storytelling. On her Substack, she shares reflections and insights from her studies, original creative pieces, and interviews with writers about their craft and creative process. You can follow her work here: https://substack.com/@jpholme