Leaving Home

Photo by Holly Mandarich on Unsplash

Leaving Home

My mother's gentle lullabyes still softly echo here,
And tears of yesterdays long past have dried and been dismissed.
The dreams and fears of budding youth have all but disappeared;
Replaced by plans, ambitions, goals, deciphered from the mists
Of what the world will someday need and what my place within;
The boundless paths that I could take, no limits but my own.
To teach or earn or build or serve or save the world from sin,
My path awaits for me to choose, now that I'm fully grown.
But what the cost of taking steps into this crazy world,
Where cats and eagles lie in wait for me, a lowly mouse?
How can I hope to navigate the raging torrent's whirls
If I must leave this solid rock: my fam'ly and my house?
But this I know, beyond all doubt, no matter where I roam,
This house is but the outer shell: I'll never lose my home.

*I love writing in sonnet form. There's plenty of real-estate to say what you want to say but there's also enough structure that you need to figure out a way to make every word count. You can't just ramble on as thoughts come to you. You actually have to think about how to make them work or if they should even be included at all. Fun!

Hope you like it. It's obviously about leaving the house you grew up in to live on your own for the first time.*