Definition of Homely

By Jennifer Nguyen

March 3, 2026

Definition of Homely

Home was never quite defined.

Many have told me,

Said with heart,

That home was a place:

Of comfort.

Of origin.

So warm and gentle it fills the room like a blanket made vapour,

Holding you everywhere,

Following you like you’d never depart.

Sometimes I think it’s lies,

But I deny that notion,

For I know the emotions.

True they were,

All were,

As they only spoke for connotation.

Home.

What an impression.

I was held,

From the moment I was born,

In hands that simply beheld me.

Cradled in plush and wood,

Taken from perfected air into a house bare for me to bear:

Walls white,

Still,

Though meticulous purity turned yellowish,

Aged in compare. 

I had never cried.

For it was all I knew,

I grew happily with it.

Mangled sheets every morning and every night.

After school I’d stay and play at where I was kept:

A laundromat where that my mother still works at. 

I’d make my due by sweeping with a broom twice-taller than me–

What a doom dredged in idiocity. 

And then we’d drive home, 

Where I stayed silent the whole time.

Where at every red-stop my mother would reach back with hands open,

And I’d drop my little fists in to see where we were going,

Only for her to squeeze,

Squeeze,

Squeeze,

Until my knuckles popped and I’d bring them back to look,

Head down,

At the ache weeping fresh.

Sometimes I think my bones were maimed.

And I’d give her my fists every time,

Every day,

As I was held all the same.

Then the meaning of home was compromised,

When,

Once,

For the first time,

I had to speak of it.

Told:

“Home is warmth”

“Home is wealth”

“Wealth in health” 

“Is rich in love”

“Held by cupped hands above your God-graved crown”

“Bleeding and cheering like a river”

“Singing serenade to undo your birth-right of being a sinner”

I was born into Catholicism,

If that makes up for context.

Perplexed, 

I imagine,

Having to be freed of freedom to be swallowed into a swaddle.

Open to a home whose door is locked and asking for your key,

Of which you do not have,

And must be given to first from its family,

In a shed that is open with no one inside but the objects of your life:

Of Wood and plush,

Planks held from the sky,

Bitten into soil,

Leaving you nothing but caged windows and soft sittings–

To be sat comfortably,

Like a plant,

As you would be stayed,

Held,

At home.

Its eye,

A spinning chandelier,

Betraying not even what it carousels,

When you stare at it like the lazy fan of your bare ceiling-wall.

And I said under my skull, 

“school feels like more.”

“With nice air”

“Warm food”

“Books that speak to me for free”

“That don’t chastise me for not being taught every little thing,”

“Before I even learned what I should have known since the beginning.”

I work,

But I work without repercussions here.

I ask,

And I am told with patience–

though condescending still–

Fit appropriately in volume for new-eared children.

And then the teacher told us to share.

Not with them, 

Not privately,

Not with say:

No yes,

Nor no.

I was not shy.

She took my hand after my second paragraph that I had written so poorly I struggled to pronounce every literature-crime,

As my new voice formed the silly-written words by deformed letter by deformed letter rather than the memory of what words I wanted to be written.

And I was held, 

Sternly, 

But concerningly,

And thus warmly, 

And gently. 

She took me to sit back down in my seat.

For a long time I wondered if it was because I couldn’t speak up, 

My voice being a low mutter for all my life,

Or because I didn’t know how to read my own lines that I had directed like I was blind.

I wondered.

But then after a while of ignoring how the other kids stared at me with wide, 

Amused, 

Confused eyes, 

Lidless pairs that mirrored my own confusion like a wet sheen sheet,

The teacher dragged up to stage with gentle, 

dictating words, 

another child.

Her name was Samantha,

And her home was fair:

Warm lit, 

Full with Thumper’s fur,

With a father who loved her mother,

Who danced– 

All three of them, 

Sometimes four–

On the living room floor. 

Though with carpet bare with toys,

I remember somehow from somewhere,

As Samantha would say how her heart was jealous that the school was so full of Batmans and Beastboys,

Of big houses the size of her that could fit tens of hundreds and even more,

But she couldn’t have because of Thumper’s odd appetite,

She had a big,

Big,

Smile.

Then the next was a boy,

His name somewhere in my mind,

Lost under and in its pink valleys.

His was about how home was when he got to play in the park.

Not alone,

Never alone,

But with his father.

As if to atone for temporary absence,

His father would take him every so often when his mother said:

“It’s your dad’s time, this week”

And venture to grassy fields so wide and fresh-aired.

And he spoke how his mother cared,

With sweet treats before dinner,

Little snacks in between the hours of the day.

Sometimes they watched movies,

Played on paper,

Picniced at the very same park like how he,

And his father

With his mother,

Had shared.

He cried how he misses her whenever he leaves for school in the midst of it.

And then another kid,

After another,

All with wet-warmth coming out their breaths as if the day was chilled,

Like any snotty child,

But only because they wanted to rush out their happiest thoughts before there comes rushing in the next,

Taking breaths like they were drowning as they spit between their speech trying to pry the words from the page with their teeth.

So restless, 

They’d often shuffle their papers in such excited fists that it’d be submitted all crumbled,

Rugged,

Onto the teacher’s desk for review.

One even tore her own,

Having been hopping up and down in glee as she recalled her father:

Him having taken her to fishing on one occasion,

And how they ate it after with charcoal still rubbed black on its shiny skin.

Within this one place,

Back when,

Where I could consider the closest to this thing they have scribed all over,

On every wall,

On every poster,

In every room,

Was that there was more to everyone else’s home,

than what was in mine.

The teacher pulled me out after that day,

After the bell,

And told me that I could have tried,

With a voice that was chastising,

Though soft,

Too soft,

As I sunk into its plush and felt my heart falling,

Despite not being free in it,

Though I never felt held.

I found Home homely,

And School was no longer so close to Home after that.