That. Is. Extinct. When the crusade came, the Phoenicians, who gifted us our first alphabets, fled inside a dead volcano for life. When my forefathers heard gunshots, they fled beyond valleys and hills… blood on feet, sweat on forehead, and the surviving words of my dying language on their tongue. They planted the family tree on this land - named it ‘home’ No soil, dying roots. Home, isn’t always a place. Sometimes there is no roof, but a hand to hold on to. The last time I visited home, the horizons shrank back in my body. There was no raindrop. No sparrow Not a single voice echoed in my mother tongue. Only a prelude to our eventual insignificance. My freezing hands reached out for the rusted trunk. Pulled out the old stethoscope, letters, worn out photographs. I placed the stethoscope on my heartbeat. Fingertips on pulse and heard the chorus of blood-rush: ‘home, home, home.’
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