What is the word for home

that is no longer “home”?

No longer a base, a fortress

or a regular destination.

But once, it was.

It was

Where your dreams were planted

and your life was

changed, once and again, and again,

shaped and molded and pushed and prodded,

challenged and changed.

The place that was once your sanctuary

and is now…

what?

Quiet.

A place of memories, old familiarities.

New faces, new storefronts, new routines.

New. Different. Changed.

But yet the same.

Same blinking stop light, same broken harbor, bridge under construction.

It once was home.

Now?

A place of myth, nostalgia, the place that was,

A placebo, a pattern, a reflex.

Home that was.

The salt air smells the same.