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‘Home’, by Benjamin Thomas Taylor

The above print hangs on my living room wall.

This simple sentence means so much more to me than you might know. I don’t have much time at all today, because I’m about to head to London to celebrate the end of the Chinese piggy year and the beginning of the rat one with one of my best friends (Happy New Year!), but I want to capture just a couple of thoughts about this.

Home feels like a long, deep exhale after holding my breath for a long time. It is expansive views, the distant roar of traffic five storeys below, the dodgy lift that everyone comments on, the yellow rug that on weekends becomes a beach where golden ‘sand angels’ are made.

Home is the sound of the buzz at the front door. It is his arrival, and hers. It is friends coming around for Games Night. It is Molly on the bed, movies projected onto the wall, days of washing up piling up next to the sink. It is paying more rent than I’ve ever paid in my life, with a bit of a wince and a lot of pride. It is being two months in and still not having half my art up on the walls. It is feeling safe. It is where love lives. It is the site of laughter and play and cuddles and memories that once made, take up permanent residence in my body. It is settling in, and knowing this isn’t forever. It is every piece of furniture having been chosen by me. It is being gleefully naked with my body and my tears. It is a dreamlike reverie of all the homes to come. It is those full circle moments from childhood to now. It is is a long deep inhale, the “soft animal of my body” loving what it loves (thank you, Mary Oliver). It is a long, deep exhale after a year of holding my breath.

I have a home. I have a home. I have a home.

(‘Home’, by Benjamin Thomas Taylor. I love this piece. Thank you, Benjamin.)