House Flood
Naomi H.
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I wrote this piece after my brother had just left for college. At first, I wasn’t that impacted by the new quietude and spaciousness of the house, but I couldn’t help but notice how deeply it affected my mom. She’d always send him streams of text, check his location, and beg him to call her more. She was constantly talking about how he was ”gone,” but with her evident longing filling the house, I almost felt as if his presence still lingered in our home. In the extra plate she kept grabbing whenever she set the table. In the emptiness of his room. In the silence at every meal. My mom’s feelings of longing and yearning really pushed me to write this piece, hoping to convey these feelings of yearning and grief, how haunt and want are often two sides of the same blade, of the same wound.
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Creativity is about offering a message about the world through a new, poignant lens; this is what artists bring to the discussion. We transform daily experiences into something meaningful and distinctive, capturing a deeper meaning to an experience all people may know, but layers to it they’d never seen before.
