My Home Is She

A girl with a camera, and the company of her favourite person. She captures what all of us yearn for: Love. The aching kind, the kind that never really goes away despite it being right there in front of you.

Don’t you think life’s too short to waste away such precious moments? To not savour every emotion and pondering that makes its way through the mess of incoherent, half-remembered thoughts? To drain away like everyone else, with no souvenir to hold close, no talisman to tether you to home? 

Whatever that is, of course. Home.

Is she home? She must be, but you don’t truly know a person. I mean, you feel you do, but you don’t, not really. 

So do you truly know your own home, then?

I sigh. Fall back into bed, clutching the camera that (supposedly) holds my home. 

I capture moments. Memories. It takes away this sense of impending doom every time I realise I’m a day older, I guess. Like sand slipping through my fingers, each grain a day I get to spend with her. In her presence, with her laugh.

Click.

February 21st, 2:47pm.

A video starts to play. Me, with my round glasses and messy hair — messy because she ruffled it, might I add — and her next to me, giggling as I adjust the camera. 

Her. 

Her and her perfect brunette hair and the stupid little star she’d always draw below her right eye, the one I’ve never admitted I love.

“We’ll get detention if our teacher catches us,” she whispers through giggles. The audio is thin and echoing in the silence of my room.

“Oh please,” I roll my eyes, “We’ll only get caught because of how loud you are.” I finally get the position of the camera right and turn to her, flicking the pale skin of her arm.

It strikes me how long ago this was. We were so young, then. Only starting our last year of high school, completely lost in our own world and unaware of anything else. I failed the final exams miserably, but at least I had her with me.

I watch the video as she sighs dramatically, letting her head drop to my shoulder while the teacher drones on about some chemistry formula. She always had a knack for complaining in the sweetest of ways; I could listen to her for hours, just for the look on her face when we shared a laugh.

There’s a muffled noise in the background of the teacher raising his voice, and we both look up in alarm. Stifled laughter, a shuffle of papers, and the video comes to an end.

My reflection smiles back at me through the black screen. It makes my heart ache, every time I look at her. Not… pain, but some kind of longing that never really goes away. Like a mess of scribbles all tangled and restless, dancing and twirling in all the worst ways yet when I’m with her they bleed into one — a steady, flowing stream, not unlike a pulse that finds home in both our hearts.

Home. Is that our own hearts, then?

Click.

I recognise the room immediately — walls framed with all kinds of portraits and landscapes, a ceiling covered in vibrant hues of blue and purple and delicately painted smudges of clouds. The camera shakes as younger me sets it on a nearby easel.

“March 8th,” I declare, pulling strands of hair behind my ear, “6:24pm.”

I watch myself, back then unaware of the girl sneaking up from behind, her hands dipped with a striking blue.

“Boo!”

I realise belatedly what’s happened. My mouth is agape. My glasses splattered with paint. Face and clothes now matching her hands. I whirl around, facing her and she bursts out laughing, accidentally colouring her own cheek in the process. 

I narrow my eyes. “How dare you,” I say, inching towards the sink. She doesn’t predict my move until too late, and squeals when I flick a lavender-coated paint brush, still not washed from the previous class. It’s just us here — hours after closing time — and she’s not escaping this today.

She squeals, grabbing the nearest palette, but I duck before she gets me. Paint splatters onto the wall, but I’m sure her mum will think it’s a symbolic piece of art. 

We’re moving in a flash. The easel the camera sits on wobbles for a second as she whizzes past it, grabbing a tube of forest green. I find an abandoned cup of mixed paint, thrusting it in front of me like some sort of shield. She hesitates, but it’s all I need to flick the cup towards her, completely splattering her with a beautiful yellow. 

I snicker, watching her shock. The sun, I remember thinking gloriously, right before she makes a lunge for me and we both tumble to the floor. Surprised laughter comes out in a huff as we knock the easel off balance on the way down, both of us smearing each other with whatever paint we can find.

You’d think us both crazy, and maybe we are. But this is us when no one else is watching. Us in pure joy with each other, stealing the world for ourselves for just a moment — as chaotic as that may be.

There’s a fumble when the camera’s picked up, and suddenly my paint-splattered face comes into view, breathless and panting as I move hair out of my eyes. She’s next to me, colourful clothes and all, watching with giggles as I smear paint all over the lens.

We both catch our breaths, spiralling into laughter again when we see each other properly. 

“God, we’re stupid,” she muses.

“But colourful,” I point out, which elicits another fit of giggles. She turns to me, wiping off some paint from my nose.

“One day, I’ll show you the world,” she decides, and I wonder what I’ve done to deserve her. “I promise.”

I remember that day as if it had been yesterday. As if I live in that moment forever. The ghost of her stains every corner of every street, her familiar smile and always that star below her eye.

Click.

Click.

Click.

I linger on this one: April 17th, 12:37pm.

I was in her bedroom for the first time, and I remember being in awe with all the trophies and medals that decorated her shelf. 

Naturally, the camera was out before she even told me what they were awarded for.

The camera focuses on each one, lingering there before moving onto the next. Gold and silver, glass and metal, each so beautiful that they shine their own little galaxy of achievements. She joins me as I film, standing quietly and watching curiously. 

I hold the camera steady to focus on a particular trophy, but not for its award; The real prize is the reflection, her smile beside mine, crescents of matching moons. Her freckles like hundreds of constellations, my glasses like ever-revolving planets.

It’s poetic, I think, how we hold the whole universe in our hands. Together.

Click.

June 6th, 4:13pm. 

A sunny day. A buzz, from bees fussing with their nectar, or maybe a fly, hungry for the food laid out on the picnic blanket. A feast, really, and I still wonder how we managed to carry all that up the hill. 

We lay next to each other, shoulders touching and chatting about something or other. A box of strawberries in my hands, a slice of cake in hers. She lays stretched out lazily under the sun, wildflowers caressing her skin and I wish desperately to be in their place.

It was officially the end of high school, and she had insisted we celebrated. 

Celebration to her, I learnt, was showing me the world.

Click.

An hour later, and she’s pulled me up from the blanket, not even waiting as she runs off into the distance. I chase after her, catching her yells and shrieks before they’re lost in the wind, and soon enough we’re both running wild, taking up space surely meant for us, pretending the day would never end. 

(It did, though memories never die when captured.)

The grass bites our ankles, but with her I don’t care. Hell, school just ended, and with a full stomach all I could think about was her. 

Her and her dress twirling in the wind, and her flowing brunette hair, and her laughs as sweet as those strawberries. 

Click.

The view takes my breath away. We’ve stopped in the middle of the field, the camera still shaking in my restless hands, my pants and laughs audible and barely contained. I mumble something, but it’s hard to hear over the howling wind. Maybe I love you, or maybe Who are you?

She sits down, finding rough blades of grass between her fingers. I adjust the camera before sitting next to her. She grabs my free hand, lifting it to the sky and observing our interlocked fingers as if they’re the most intriguing sight she’s seen.

Holding hands, I remember so vividly. Holding each other. Holding our secrets like the world could be silenced if we tried hard enough.

The camera focuses on her. I want to kiss her eyelids, her brows, her lips, the tip of her nose… I want to kiss the soul that bears this body. 

(Or the body that bears her soul? Home?)

“What do you think?” Her voice breaks through my incoherent thoughts, headphones pulled over desperate ears.

“Of what?”

“The world.”

I think for a moment. Look to the view in the distance, the colours that hug the sun in just the right place, the overgrown gardens and the cosy houses. 

“I think it’s a wonderful place.”

“Hey.”

I sit up, camera disregarded.

Explosions. 

Paint splatters, strawberry-stained fingertips, lazy days in the sun, the hum of a lullaby. Giggles and shrieks and silence and tears, and love.

I smile. “Hey.”

She drops her bag to the floor, bounding over to jump on the bed beside me. “You’ve really got to tell your mother not to harass me with cookies every time I visit. Really, my stomach can only hold so many.” 

I look at the chocolate stain on the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, I had a few,” she admits, “but they just look so good! Honestly, I don’t know how you can resist such delicious treats.” She sighs, flopping on her back with a satisfied smile.

I raise the camera. 

Click.

She raises a brow. “That camera never leaves you, does it?”

I ignore her question. Pose another. “Where do you think home is?”

“Wherever you are, of course.” She boops my nose, and I smile.

I think I’ve been searching for home all this time, but it’s right in front of me. 

She is my home.

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Author's Note: I wanted to capture in this story the messy and chaotic feelings that come along with love — platonic or not — and the beauty in this mess, the colours that bleed from us in such willing vulnerability.