Poet: Nikola Ofcakova

Editor’s note: Thank you to creative friday group for having me in their cozy fridays – keeping poetry and community alive together, and thank you to dearest Nikola for giving me permission to publish this very delicate poem, the poet herself is one of the best and natural talents I’ve ever seen.

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Little girl, standing alone in the storm, wondering why the rain felt kinder than returning home.

Little girl stood in the rain alone, no umbrella, no place called home.

The thunder rolled, the cold wind cried, yet less afraid than when she stepped inside.

For every house that carried that name, felt like a prison dressed in frame.

4 concrete walls, a locked front gate, a place of duty, fear, and weight.

They speak of home as candlelight, soft arms that hold you through the night.

They speak of safety, peace, and grace,a heart that finally finds its place.

I hear those words and feel the pain of something I always tried to gain, 

but never did, though years have flown, a simple peace I yearn to know.

Not brick, not roof, not door, not key, but space to simply, safely be.

To rest without the need to hide, without preparing deep inside

for one more wound, one more demand, one more blow I could not withstand.

So I searched in lovers passing through, believing what I wished was true.

I poured my heart into their hands, and built my home on shifting sands.

But people comes and people goes, no river was designed for home.

They change, they leave, they rise, they bend, and every current finds an end.

Some people are like trees that gladly stay, rooted deep in the same well known place.

But I want to be like river, wild and free, to make the road and wind belong to me.

When I dream, I do not see a house beneath the old oak tree.

I dream of borders yet unknown, of moving paths I've never shown.

A train at dawn, a distant shore, a thousand open roads and more.

For movement sings within my bones, more sweetly than familiar stones.

And when the world grows hard to bear, I find my truest shelter there,

among the forests, fields, and streams, the keeper of my childhood dreams.

The river never asks for more.

The mountain keeps no hidden score.

The sky does not demand I bend.

The trees need neither fix nor mend.

No guilt, no role, no debt to pay.

No need to earn my right to stay.

Nature lets me simply be, and that feels close to home for me.

Perhaps that's why I understand the language spoken by the land.

The mother that I longed to see was waiting in the earth for me.

And now I know, though grief remains, through all the losses, roads, and rains,

the home I sought through every mile, I carried inside me all the time.

Not in a lover's fleeting kiss.

Not in a house I somehow missed.

This heart, this breath, this skin, these bones. 

This body of mine is the only home I know and own.

This life moving through me , like a river finding its own way to the sea…