Febuwhump Day 14: Can't Go Home
Word Count: 823
Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl
Rating: K/G
Characters: Maria Ross
Warning: N/A
Summary: All Maria really wants to do is the one thing she can't—go home.
Notes: I know that Maria got herself involved in everything by time of the PD, but I'm pretty sure she had a period of time, or at least moments, where her whole situation was completely overwhelming.
Can't Go Home
This was a strange land. Maria had been promised a paradise, and perhaps that what this was to many people. But it was strange and foreign to her. Nothing was familiar. Nothing was similar. Everything from language to dress to food to architecture was different. The family she was staying with was very kind, from what she could understand of them, and treated her well. But it was still, well, foreign to her. From the moment she woke up, until she went to bed that night, everything was different.
When she woke in the mornings, it wasn't in a bed as she thought of it. It was on what she thought of as a padded mat with a blanket. She didn't make up her bed. She rolled it up and stored it in a closet. She dressed before she left her room, in clothes that were hanging on racks in a corner, clothes that you wrapped around you and tied off, clothes that she still sometimes got wrong, and the other women helped her redress properly. Her floor was covered in mats of some sort, and there were no chairs. If she needed to use the desk, she sat on the floor. If she wanted to write something, there were no pens, just a brush and ink. The writing system was different too and besides, she had no one to write to. Not anymore.
Going to the bathroom was different as well. The placement of it, how it worked, washing up—there were different customs around it, and she found them difficult to remember when she was tired. Breakfast, too, was different. Different foods, ones that she didn't consider breakfast foods or that she had never tried were laid out. Nothing was similar, and the spice palate was completely different. Eating with the sticks was difficult as well, and more often than not, she made a mess, which was embarrassing.
The way the food was cleaned up, the way it was prepared, the way it was stored, the way the dishes were treated, it was all such a different way of doing things that she often felt lost. She tried to help, but she had no idea what she was doing, and she just felt like she got in the way.
Entertainment was different. She couldn't understand the language, true, but she also just didn't understand what was going on. It wasn't entertaining to her, it wasn't engaging, and she had a feeling that she was often misinterpreting what was happening anyway.
The culture, the customs, the food, the day-to-day life—she missed and yearned for home.
She wanted bread, fresh baked, out of the oven. Sourdough bread. She wanted to go eat at her favorite shops, to eat some of her mother's stew and rolls again. She wanted to reread her favorite books and listen to things she understood. She wanted to sing songs that she knew, hear words she recognized as others talked. She wanted clothes she knew she looked acceptable in, furniture that was familiar and normal for her. She wanted to be able to just be able to slip into conversations and to know where the boundaries were.
She wanted to go home.
But she couldn't, and she knew that.
Maria sat that night at her desk, trying to master using the brush and the ink. She couldn't go home. She couldn't go home, and she knew it. All she could do was mourn her life and try to make what she could of this life here.
With a sigh, she put down the brush. Her strokes were clumsy, and she probably used too much ink on the paper, but she had, at least, gotten out what she was feeling. She had never been one for writing, and very few poems had ever spoken to her. But something about having no other way to express what she felt had left her doing her best to write out her feelings with the brush and ink. She cleaned the brush, left the paper there to dry, and crawled into her bed, the words she had written echoing in her.
"You can't go home," the trees outside seemed to say.
"You can't go home," the unfamiliar markets sang.
"You can't go home," the birds seem to cry.
"You can't go home," the wind said with a sigh.
"I can't go home," I repeat to myself
As I tie up my clothes with a sash and a belt.
"I can't go home," and it's something I know,
But my heart inside yearns and longs for home.
"I can't go home," it is my truth
So, home this is, until time says to move.
Perhaps one day she could go home. Perhaps one day she'd be of use again. But until that day, Maria wondered if it just wasn't better to let herself believe that she could never be able to go home again.
Author's Note: I am not a poet, and that is obvious, and I hope that's not as awkward as it seems to me.