The Only Home Known

The morning news broke gently,

like frost on glass:

Ten people injured in downtown Boulder—

raising their voices for Israeli hostages in Gaza.

And in Gaza, twenty lives gone,

a hundred wounded waiting for food,

for something like hope.

Of all the beautiful places on this vast, aching Earth,

Boulder—that soft, sunlit crease in the map—

is the only one I can closely call home.

Downtown Boulder,

where my favorite library lives, breathes, sleeps

beside the murmuring creek.

Where even the geese refuse to leave in winter—

Nibir chasing them over the mossy pebbles

when the water turns to glass

and then cracks.

One September afternoon, I was there—

in an off-white saree (they call it beige now),

sunlight glowing tangy on the historian’s cheek.

He looked up, smiled—

and we talked like we’d always known how.

It was the first Jaipur Literature Festival – North America I ever attended.

Since then, Boulder has hosted JLF each year,

and we were always there—

until we no longer called it home.

Nibir was born under the stars that live above Boulder Hill,

that single bright one that wakes in the fall

and waits till spring—

until frost slips off the world

and Colorado’s gold comes back.

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A little black girl born on a wintry morning in Kolkata

never knew what a home really meant.

She made homes of hotel rooms, borrowed couches,

bookshelves packed and unpacked

fourteen times across the globe.

And then came the fifteenth:

The Hub on 26th Street.

It felt like a hotel—

long corridors, cold lights,

always awake.

She cried and told Suva,

“It doesn’t feel like home.”

Suva, always gentle, said,

“You’ll see—you can walk anywhere here.

To 29th Street Plaza. To King Soopers.

To Scott Carpenter Park when the baby comes.”

But she missed Evanston,

the lake, the people who became family.

She thought adult life meant choosing who you loved

and living in their nearness.

She didn’t know it would feel like leaving yourself behind.

That fall, it flooded in Boulder—

and the Camry floor too.

Then Nibir arrived.

And by the next summer,

Apartment 302 had quietly become home.

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Books spilled across the carpet,

toys tucked into odd corners.

She couldn’t keep anything out of reach

from the little one—

so intense in his joy,

so wild in his love.

He undid her.

Taught her how to be a woman—

to cook, bake, care, drive.

To drive to parks,

to teach him to ride a bike at three

every evening after work.

Nibir, born to swim—

born with sun on his face

and gills in his ribs.

The sunny boy of Colorado,

with snow in his middle name,

creek water in his veins.

He built bridges from driftwood,

named every boulder,

climbed trees,

stole pinecones from chipmunks,

rolled in the slush,

and giggled with bare knees

and no snow pants on.

A wild, free creature

of the Midwest.

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And then, as all stories do—

this one curved toward goodbye.

Goodbye to the fifteenth home.

The only one she ever truly got to build.

The baking trays,

the book cubes taken down,

the construction vehicle curtain—

folded with care.

There were playdates and final bakes,

promises of returns whispered on the park bench.

NPR took the Camry.

She left the keys in the leasing office,

next to the bowl of candy

that had always been there.

The last Starbucks—

the one around the corner—

sipped slowly with the kind of friends

who stay forever.

And from the last seat of the green shuttle

to the land of glistening icicles,

she looked back.

The home she made

whispered softly,

I will keep waiting,

with my lights on.