Skylight
December 21, 2025
It’s Saturday morning, and everyone has already left for home. The dorm hall where I live is eerily empty; normally, it’s quiet from people sleeping in on the weekend, but this time, the silence is hollow. Though my flight home is in a few hours, part of me doesn’t want to leave.
I strolled around campus on this quiet Saturday, wondering what home means. I thought I had it figured out, but having two extended places of stay stretched across two coasts made me realize that the definition of home isn’t so simple.
I place home in the hearts of each person I meet, but when our paths diverge, I feel displaced.
On days like these, I think of Skylight. It’s a place on the university campus next to the high school I attended. It’s not actually called that — just a hacker’s name for it, perfectly in East Campus style. The first — and realistically, probably also the only — time I went up there was with someone who I don’t speak to anymore.
Again I fall asleep
to see you in my dream
My alarm rings at 5am the next day. Soon, I’m walking on my own again. I can feel my insides churn and split apart; it feels wrong to go home, or at least the place I called home for eighteen years.
When I’m in my hometown, I know I’ll feel like a foreigner. Two weeks is long enough for that to happen, yet also short enough to start readjusting my sense of home.
And then, just like that, I’ll be gone again.
I’m at the airport, realizing how lonely life really is. There may be courses to follow or a pipeline to travel through, but I know I’m not the kind of person to follow someone else’s path to feel fulfilled. I think of the one college essay prompt: “While some reach their goals following well-trodden paths, others blaze their own trails achieving the unexpected.” Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t this way; there’s a sort of wicked pride I possess in being able to carve a way for myself. I remember last year, being so sure of the major I wanted to pursue and having solid connections. But after the whirlwind of senior spring term and this fall semester, I’m not sure I still could say the same.
Would my past self have expected the path I took?
But this path is what I want, I keep telling myself. The choice was, and still is, mine.
I whisper something you don't hear,
cause you weren’t here
Maybe I’ll have to be okay with the fact that there will be places and people I deeply miss no matter where I go. In a way, it’s a strange privilege, because it means I at least have something to lose.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
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