Things familiar in places unfamiliar.

I carry around a lego plane that my brother and I built the day he left for the US three years ago. My bag always has this small purple glitter pocket diary that my mom bought me when I was in class 10, with "happiness" written on it. I have a keychain hanging in my room that I got in Bali, one of my most calming trips ever. I have my mom's ponds powder in my room, not because I use it but because the desser feels incomplete without it. I use a lemon citrus room freshener because it reminds me of how my childhood home used to smell. And I use old worn out bedsheets from back home, just because it makes my bed feel cozier. 

These things are useless by themselves, but they leak and drip of the home-ness they contain. I didn't think about this until I drew this plushie, that I used to have in my hostel room in my final year, but I realise we place these totems around in hopes that the home-ness they leak seeps into other things that now feel unfamiliar until, hopefully, those things themselves become objects that will one day, years down the line, leak a new iteration of my homeness.

Until then, I'll sprawl on my mom's sheets, in a room that smells like my childhood, with things that remind me that home is anything that makes it just that.