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Back Home

(Lyrics from Back Home by Andre Tanker)

 

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

It feels as though every time I leave, it takes
longer to come back.

first six months, then nine, now ten–

as if they have been grooming me to leave
forever.

I ask myself how people could leave for years
and years and never look back?


not even once?

But the truth is, it gets easier.

What is one year more when you’ve been gone for
five?

or ten?


or twenty?

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

 Each time I fear that she
will not take me back.

I think anyone who has ever left home for length of time can tell
you about that fear

that you have changed too much to go back to the place

that you cannot call it home without a sour taste in your mouth.

You don’t live somewhere without it changing you and can’t come back
without those changes

Whether is a yankee accent, or an expectation of something better.

i went away /
looking for another home / tried to run away / run way from my destiny /

Yuh see, we is d people who does come back sayin ting like
“Well back in Canada…”

in another world /
a world that was strange to me / tried to change myself / change my identity

But what we doesn’t tell yuh is how we don’t fit there either

Because whatever Canada or New York or England or other northern
promised land we have created

Despite the efficiency of public transit or the cheapness of “food”

We know that we will never really be more than our hyphenations

Than our exotic accents

Than our otherness.

Calling there home gives you that sour taste too.

You can’t live somewhere without it shaping you, and you can’t leave
without taking whatever idea of home you had with you.

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way