Casa de Papel
written by Emily Nuñez
written by Emily Nuñez
Home was someplace smaller, before- within the same walls, familiar faces, rooted in repetition, routine. It was childlike and structured and sweet.
It was the classic albums emitting from vinyl and CDs, aloud, for all the home to hear. It was candles and cleaning supplies, colored pens and crafts. It was my many stuffies dressed in my mother’s scarves.
Home was quaint and contained, but all-encompassing- it was the whole and only world we knew.
Home is a vast obscurity now, existing metaphysically.
Something to believe in, something to tailor, no longer a given, but a choice.
Fleeting moments to grasp onto, authenticities to recognize and pursue.
In childhood, time moved slow. Those walls would be home for what felt like forever, but eternity was impossible when they never belonged to us. Homeowned by self-elevated entities, cosplaying gods toying with fates, contorting their dolls forward and backward to fit the undersized playhouse. Forced to relocate, from country to country, apartment to apartment, class to class, job to job, person to person, attachments constantly betraying us, because the only thing you cannot train humans to accept is death. Could be the death of an era, the death of the home.
Maybe home was never meant to be the structure. Maybe it was the root, the motherland trampled and exploited. It hurts almost too much to claim.
Yet if only we can curate an experience of belonging, wherever we exist, and hold onto it with all our might. Nurture and expand it, till the homemade substance completes us again.