By Hannah LaFond
I wish for you to always find a home where you come from,
and that your people will love you without provisions.
But, if you don’t, and if they don’t,
I hope you won’t stay long.
Don’t drag your feet over splintering floorboards
or scratch the days on peeling paint.
Don’t measure the marks on the doorframe
to shame yourself for changing.
When the crate they built gets too tight,
and the halls once loved turn foreign,
I hope you listen to those warnings.
I hope you leave at the first sign.
If there’s no home where you come from, you’ll find another.
In strange rooms with stranger people,
in the arms of lovers and friends
in food, and books, and art,
in lonely walks, and sordid bars
You’ll find it wherever you are.
And when you do, I hope you’re not scared to make it known.
To plant barefeet in the mud, call to the sky, and cut your hair.
Address the curls to those you came from.
Not a ransom but a declaration
of the home you have become.
Hannah LaFond is an LGBTQ+ writer living in New York City. Her story "Goodbye Three Times" was recently published in the New York Times’ Modern Love Column. As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared in Health Digest, The List, and Deseret News, including interviews with Kristin Chenoweth, Heidi Klum, and Katherine Langford. She received her bachelor's degree in communications from Brigham Young University, a private LDS school, where she first began exploring the intersection between her lesbian identity and Mormon upbringing in her writing.
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