Feels Like Home Feels Like Home
Feels Like Home Feels Like Home
Editors Note
Hello Everyone, Welcome to the November Issue of Peach. Our first printed run of the 24-25 academic year!
In “Feels Like Home” we asked our members to consider various themes of nostalgia, family, home and diaspora in their creative works. We are excited to host various prose, poetry, and photography pieces. We wanted to thank every participant in the theme and those who attended the workshops.
We hope our readers will be inspired by this collection and ask themselves: What makes a place or person Feel Like Home?
Enjoy,
Basia Leśniewska & Ruby Beasley
PEACH Chief & Deputy Editors
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Outskirts ~ Shermaine Leung
Back to the nest ~ Lily Jackson
Morning at the Farmer’s House ~ Thành Liêu
Aftershock ~ Thomas Banks
With it, it glowers ~ Joel Crane
A Place Called Home ~ Lily Jackson
History Hands ~ Amaal Fawzi
Kovu ~ Clara T. Rivolli
Do you still want to visit? ~ Ruby Beasley
Memories of Important and Loved Things ~ Evie Pearman
Journey Home ~ Nimat Choudhury
Bon Weekend ~ Samantha Coupe
Home ~ Mx. Adam Khan
Images of My Mother ~ Basia Leśniewska
unspoken words ~ Keira O’Grady
Where is your heart? ~ Artur Baran
Remember Me Fondly ~ Kate McCormick
A Bad Habit ~ KSP
Remembrance ~ Hadi Younas
Outskirts
Recently moved out of the city
Put the hustle and bustle behind me
Now I'm somewhere in between
The metropolis and the evergreen
Neon signposts flashed across my closed eyes
And sometimes I wake to the sound of sirens
In the silence of my empty house
Wondering if I was the city or the country mouse
Gone was the familiar tint of grey
Widened was the separation of night and day
The ceiling was beyond touch and the skies further
It felt as if I stood under no roof
Like a wanderer with no hat, no shoes
Walking on a thin shell, I tiptoed
Rippling, each and every step echoed
Why does it seem unsettling
Hearing myself in my settlement
What is the path to pave
When there's no footprints on the pavement
Well count me surprised
Was my vision narrow
Or has the sky always been this wide?
Shermaine Leung
Back To The Nest
by Lily Jackson
Morning at the Farmer’s House
Rice stalks rock back and forth, limp in the wind. Droplets of morning dew collect and bead off the banana tree leaves. The sun peers from the horizon as the cold night air dissipates into tomorrow, light begins to cover the Earth as the cockerel begins its call.
The air, thick with fresh rain from the night wafts into every crevice, the scent of cow dung and burnt grass dance on the ground, along the trees, and beneath the sky. A soft blue, kissed by soft white clouds. Under its reach, the grasshoppers chirp in the fields as they bask in the sun.
A house sits peacefully alongside the road, the gate open and the front door non-existent, open air enters every room.
Inside, there lies an empty wooden bed, with only a thin straw mat for padding, standing atop patterned cement tiles that span the entirety of the house, nearby the old farmer watches from his weary eyes the day breaking through.
The old farmer tends to his chickens in the backyard, his weathered and wrinkled skin soaking in the sunlight, watching, as they peck and strut under the coconut trees. He listens to the soft hum of nature and closes his eyes for a second.
The neighbour’s pigs jostle and snort, tossing around in the mud. Across the road, water buffalos walk alongside an old woman, ambling down the street. A bike passes by as a schoolchild pedals on the soft dirt road.
As the sun climbs the sky, the farmer walks around his field, wet soil clinging to his bare feet, he moves closer to inspect the paddy as small fish swim in the water, wading through the rice.
He thinks of his children and his grandchildren, scattered across the province, some, across the world. He thinks of the past and the turmoil, the present and the tranquillity, and the future and the quiet.
Back at his home, he lays down on his hammock, using his leg to rock himself, he sways softly and rhythmically, side to side. The warm wind floats by as he drifts away, slowly back to sleep.
Thành Liêu
Aftershock
When it cracked the crusty surface
They crumbled one by one
As waxy birds without their wings
Driven molten in the sun.
I watched my earth split to black Complete with scars to last a life
The broken shell, a hollow memory
As thin as flesh cut by knife; The clock tracks the tremors With ticks of a second hand For weeks have passed but even now I still hear the love we had.
When the abysses freeze to solid These worlds will live apart With nothing left but painful grooves For us to carry in our heart.
Thomas Banks
With it, it glowers
And with it
It glowers, crashes into the sea, Comes closer without mirth, Meaning to say that we’ve gone home, And home is sombre but is safe Or is ok
History Hands
Pink felt tip pen tracing my history hands, Focusing on finding fat feet in the sand – the World was monochrome and technicolour
All at once and princess backpacks Held love notes to ladybirds with no legs.
Now I taste every penny in a loaf of bread
And the lines in my hands cut to bone where Three generations unspoken burrow in Marrow to find a home that doesn’t exist.
There are women and stories
And so much silence stacked like pots and pans
Above my head,
There are hollow skeletons pulling me in and Out through grooves in my skull, Women and stories and mounds of soil
My daughters will never be able to lose their fat feet in, Bark on trees they will never be able to sink their teeth in.
One day I hope to sit on a park bench
With a little girl wearing a princess backpack and tell Her everything there is to know Of three generations unsaid, Forget I’ve told her and tell her again,
Maybe smell like cigarettes, Maybe send her off to collect Flowers and bees with pieces missing
And teach her how to love so well that She forgets the petals and wings that aren’t there,
Maybe tickle her fat feet when she loses them in the sand, Maybe take a felt tip pen and write love notes
To our history on her hands, teach her to love the emptiness And grieve with her in languages she does not understand –
There are women, And stories,
And three generations
Stacked like empty water jugs above my neck. I steady them with my history hands
And in my dreams, I dream
About my daughter
Losing her fat feet in the soil of the land
The marrow of our bones never really left.
Amaal Fawzi
Kovu
Two thousand years ago
Before there was chocolate or D&D
Before the library went up in flames
When you couldn’t yet get a replacement knee
A cat stepped on a wet piece of clay
A man then laughed and baked the clay with the pawprint
And used it to build the road that leads to Rome
A man who told us even accidentally
The cat I love guides my way home
A cat, my cat
So we know felines remain the same And the same are the people who love them
Who feed them and pet them
Who revel in their mayhem
Who remembered them
Something tells me such a cat was happy
If something of it managed to survive
If it managed to yell through the ages
I was here, I mattered, I thrive
If someone kept it alive
A cat lived
Millenniums between us but it did
And it breathed the same air you breathe
Isn’t that all you truly need
Remember me. Remember me.
I wonder if the man knew In two thousand years they would pull the paw from the ground
And know a naughty cat tried to ruin the work But just turned it into pure gold to be found If he knew just looking at the piece I would cry
And it would make me wish I had my very own piece And in it, I would mark my own cat’s paw And I’d die in peace
Knowing I had buried it deep in my backyard
And two thousand years from now
When they found it hidden there
They wouldn’t know his name started with a K Or which was his favorite nap chair But they would know one thing
Kovu was loved
What could be greater than that? He was loved
Clara T. Rivolli
Do you still want to visit?
I’ve often felt that writing about home feels vaguely like being in one of those lavatories with a cheap, nautical theme. It has always made me feel the slightest bit queasy, particularly when I’m nowhere near the sea. You can usually find it in the guest bathrooms of older couples in land-locked, cinderblock grey towns. A sanitised, almost medical blue, becomes the ocean, tiled. And a bathmat with an anchor on it hits the floor with a thud. Their glue-swelled shells and striped towels are idols of a half-forgotten fashion, regurgitated hereafter like a spluttering drain. A by-gone age, one that manufactured and sold seaside holidays, flakes at its facsimile edges in my home town. I swill the very dregs of it around my spinning, garish teacup, and hate the funfair.
To actually live somewhere like this is transient and entirely subject to the unkindness of the seasons. When the white horses draw in, and the sun catches the last train out of town, the words to describe it scatter with the tourists. Milk-drop skies become the circus tent you live under, and you walk the promenade battered by the wind like cod and chips.
Morsels of those summers past, engorged and enjoyed, may still be seen, of course. You can catch a glimpse of them, if you look hard enough. Around the empty, sand-blown park and ride, dirty paper bags soar then skitter. They’ll tell you, they used to wrap ice creams in brown paper. The old Punch and Judy stand still squawks to the wind, and the gulls respond in kind. They’ll cloud the air and tell you plainly if they don’t like your assemblage of attire. Gulls are used to top hats and petticoats, I should think.
My own bathroom is a hypocritical, seafaring blue. There’s clay painted starfish pressed into the walls and conches that cough dust up on the shelves. It’s all very subtle. The Victorians who sojourned along our precious promenade always said that the sea air was healing. Perhaps that’s why the elderly and impotent flock to our shores when the sun shines and days can be bartered. Perhaps that’s why we keep our pills and plasters in the bathroom cabinet.
I come from the town that brought plague to England, we’re famous for it. Look it up.
Do you still want to visit?
One night, you get lucky and bring the cold back with you in your bones. You will only ever partially thaw out. The townsfolk will complain about foreigners, growing fat on foreign gold. Cruise ships from America and France, will feed the famished, weary front.
Whether you will be both born and lost there, in the cycle of warmth and rain, youth and joint ache, is up to you.
As for me, I always did ask to be buried in the sand.
Ruby Beasley
Memories of Important and Loved Things
I remember home well.
Our days would be apart, but we would spend our nights in circles, talking and walking together, wringing our hands, laughing, singing, skipping. Noise and movement everywhere, like birds singing mid-flight. Not once would we part from one another, until sunrise came, hearts searing with sweet pain.
Mother and I flew back home from gatherings, leaping in through the first-floor window to my room.
“Quick!” my Mother would say, and I’d dash into bed, catch a few blinks of fitful sleep, with a charm to help, before school. As I left the house, I’d look behind me as I closed the door, catching one last glimpse of her before the day began. Often, Mother would sit with a dusty crystal ball that she had been meaning to feather-dust in front of her.
I would come home after a long and boring day in the cage of a classroom and sit in an old armchair, tweedy and sturdy, at the centre of our living room. The walls were lined with bookshelves of fairy tales and philosophy and spell books, all well-read; the mantelpiece bore a collection of seeing stones and pots of wildflowers; the floating lamps above emitted a soft cuddle of light. The cat would sit in my lap, my hand raking through its rough and frizzy fur. My feet still dangled far above the wooden floor and homemade rug.
In the corner were the brooms, well-used, well-worn, tired from the night. My mother was there, singing like always. Around her neck is a black pendant adorned at the front with silver three moons- waxing, full, waningstriking against the onyx like metal veins. On her head is a pointed hat, neat and pointed, not floppy and wide-brimmed like the ones you find in cheap marts. Her knitting needles are clicking away, unprompted, well used to her wishes, as she reads. Her boots are in mud from where she went looking for new herbs in the forest. Her laugh was like the crackle of old autumn leaves tumbling in the wind, her kisses were snapshots of bliss.
On the stove, huffing and puffing, bristling a little, set to work every day, was a cauldron. I yearned for the smell of something thick and hot and at the very least ediblemy stomach grows, the cat purrs, arches it back, nestles further into my lap, spine against the pit of my tummy- but lilac smoke was billowing from the brim and if I were to approach, I would feel my spine crack, fingers go white and brittle like burning metal, my lips turn blue, and my eyelashes would bear tiny droplets of frost.
A raven came to our window that eve. I sighed in relief. I came to fear the owls, which never failed to foretell bad omens.
Mother listened to it; her head cocked to one side. I tried to listen too; I couldn’t distinguish the caws as words yet. Doubtlessly it is bearing good news, for Mother smiles and beckons me as it swoops away. I had my head down until then. I think I was reading the tear leaves swirling in the base of my cup. I put it aside, and rose, my stockinged feet stomped along the floor.
Mother asked me if I wanted to go to the Solstice festival. Of course, I said yes. She tells me a special guest will be visiting. I never found out who it was. We sat by the warm hearth for a while longer. Her kisses lingered in the air. She took my hand, turned it up towards the skies, and read the lines with a stroke. She frowned. She sent me off to play on the heaths until sundown, to lose myself amidst the rising and rolling green.
Leaving, I looked back and saw her head was in her hands, her eyes shadowed like stormy skies. I closed the door and saw the tabby at my feet. I shooed the cat back in, tutting at it for the last time. I closed the door again, without looking back. I walked away from the porch, marked with fading runes and glossy crystals each for protecting important and loved things. I ran off into the burning red sunset. I wish I could go back home, but now it’s all gone up in smoke. All I have is my memory.
Evie Pearman
Bon Weekend
The ground my life was built upon, My bed, my room, my house is gone. I’ve still some money in the bank, Not earnings but my loans to thank, And clothes to keep me nice and warm, Though I’ve no coats to bear this storm. I’ve blankets soft for when I sleep And mirrors in the river deep, But bed is itchy, sharp and green And brown canals won’t keep me clean. A bigger home than all of you Adorned by open flowing blue Will shake my skin as winters come; I’ll miss my sister and my mum. I’ll miss my toys and miss the beach, I’ll miss my God in closer reach. Revel the Satans cast away, But fear the demons here to stay, And hope the evils in this town Won’t deep in water hold you down. For more I lose and less I gain, I know that I will stand the pain. The cold, cold nights and lonely fights, The sweltered rain and blinding lights, I know I’ll clear as ever see, For I have paper, pen and me.
Samantha Coupe
Home
A roof over your head
With your chosen company to welcome you
To warm filling food served at the table
And where a comfy silky linen-draped bed awaits
Adorned with soft pillows to rest your dreary head
These luxuries always being so distant
As home is a place I’m not familiar with Forever just out of reach whenever I reach out
With my arms extended I’m desperate to grab and hold
Yet when my fingers grasp these ideas dissipate into the ether
Like trying to remember a dream once awoken
A persistent idea which won’t
The details always vague and imperfect
I’m undeterred and continue the lifelong journey to find that safety
Which comes with the permanence of home
Those nostalgic memories of sporadic safety
Which I view through rose-tinted glasses
Offer me some solace in my adverse journey
But it’s just a rosy retrospection of my history
Which omits the pain and trauma present at the time
Moving address more than a hundred times is truly a feat
My journey to home being indeed exceptional
From rough sleeping on the cold stone street
To award winning activism which is global
Mapping my life journey was never going to be neat
A roof over my head
A human right of which I’m deserving
Shouldn’t be gatekept for the privileged
Unless systemic change takes place
A home for me is still only a dream
Mx. Adam Khan
Images of My Mother
I perceived our past through the
Photographic Scriptures
Of family albums that mixed and matched with time
My mother’s art and imperfect family gatherings
All held with importance
Like butterflies pinned in the centre frame. The first camping trip,
Black and white portraits of disinterested cats
The silent city landscapes Asleep under the cover of snow
Overexposed picture of forget-me-nots in the park, taken by my shaking and blurring hands with her guidance.
Mother holding me while
My infant tangerine face
Falls crying into the itchy blue sweater
Old Grey Heron frozen in motion with its beak unhinged Moments before catching its prey.
Seeing my Grandmother in her youth
Posed on a hill, for the lens of a Kodak to capture
The memory, That moment
Her profile, The aquiline nose
Family’s eagle crest
One third of a second - the shutter closes
Her Mother One singular photo
Or this album Filled to the brim
Does not hold
The hate
The love
The pain
That she brought.
I
was taught about our past Through my Mother’s sermons Brutal yet honest
Basia Leśniewska
unspoken words
We sit together on the lush grass, shoulder to shoulder. Despite the cold weather, I feel warmth radiating from you and without thinking, I shuffle closer. Even though there are couples around us, they all blur in the background as I maintain my focus on you.
“Aren’t the fireworks pretty?” you ask, staring at the display. Your eyes shine with a child-like wonder, so different from the eyes that are normally dark with disguised grief. I always wondered how I could replace this grief with something brighter. I wondered if I even had the right to be the one to do so.
“Yeah,” I reply a beat late, staring at your face. It is illuminated by the colourful lights, and your cheeks are flushed pink. I smile to myself and place my head on your shoulder.
Happiness looks good on you, the one who would do everything to help others while never thinking of yourself.
I remember when, in the park, you taught me how to make flower crowns. You held my hands with such gentleness, guiding me through each step. The realisation only hit me the next day that, when I finally succeeded in making the flower crown, the lingering emptiness in my chest that I couldn’t remember a life without had been replaced by warmth. The pride in your eyes as I reached up to place the flower crown on your head filled me with a lightness I couldn’t explain.
When I’m feeling particularly nostalgic, I gaze at the picture we took of our flower crowns. I can’t help but laugh each time; my flower crown looks so shoddy next to yours. Even so, you painstakingly wore the flower crown I made you until it dried out. Thinking of it still makes me want to shovel a hole, crawl into it, and never come out.
But most importantly, that was the day you became my home, the one capable of bringing my worries to a close with a simple smile.
Another day, I encountered you playing the guitar in the same park, alone. At a distance you seemed in peaceful solitude, but as I grew closer, I noticed the shaking of your band aid covered hands and the tensing of your lips with each hesitant twang of the instrument. I didn’t know what to do. The grief in your eyes had grown so cold, so unapproachable, that I found myself faltering. I desperately wanted to help you, but how could I when such overwhelming vulnerability was painted on the face of someone I admired so much?
Our eyes met.
I ran away. I still regret it.
Now, as we sit in comfortable silence, I straighten up and muster up the strength to whisper the words I should have said that day: “Could you teach me how to play the guitar?”
You startle slightly, turning to me with wide eyes. I’m surprised to find that your gaze softens as you smile at me. A genuine smile, with no barriers, which melts away my anxieties.
“Of course.”
Maybe one day, I can be your home as well; the one who gives you courage to no longer face your sorrows alone.
Keira O’Grady
Where is your heart?
Home is a house lived in, Creaking stairwells, Tight corridors, Rooms barely a dwelling, Nostalgia.
Home is a treasured schedule, Walks away from home, Crisp dark air, Full moon glaring.
Home is a cherished tool, a Truly wonderful pen, Sole trodden shoes, a Coat worn everywhere, a Walked stick.
Home is cackles of laughter, Incessant screams, a Quiet hum, Silent nights.
Home is a lover’s embrace, a Friend, an acquaintance, a Stranger’s trust, Family.
Home is a third place, a friend filled bar, a farm barely remembered, a downtrodden path, a peaceful bench. Home is the heft of a book, Each a story, Unbounded, Crafted, Comfort.
Artur Baran
Remember Me Fondly
See me multiplied as I see you
Siblings are reflections
Mother figures are too
You can find me in their love
Hidden between the pages
Notice my soul is bound to the house
One of those honor bound mages
You were my Queen
My first Matriarch I see you in the moon
You remain after dark
Seek me out in their voices, eyes, and speed
We are not the same but similar, like DNA and blood
Use your memories to fill the gaps
Let it fill mind like a flood
You cared for me before all else
My life force and my keeper I see you in nature
You nourish the willow weeper
Find me in the space between and I shall meet you there I remember you always
The fondest memories I can bear
Kate McCormick
A Bad Habit
“Stop drawing on me! I’m not made for this!!”
I like drawing on the walls. I’ve been doing it forever. At first, it was just squiggles, but now I can draw flowers and stickmen and circles. The walls look way better with all the pictures on them, not just plain and boring like they used to be.
Mom and Dad. Grandma and Grandpa. They didn’t like it very much. I get yelled at for drawing on the walls. I promised them I stop, but… I had a pencil with me. A very small one that is hard to write with, but I can still draw with it.
“What do you mean?” I was drawing a swirly line inside of a circle when it yelled at me. The adults were not the only ones who wanted us kids to stop.
“You kids have covered me in scribbles! I used to be nice and clean. Now I’m just a mess.” Mr House complained, almost as much as my parents did.
I looked around at all the stick people and flowers and cats with eight legs. That one monkey my cousin drew was pretty neat too. “But… we’ve always drawn on you,” I said. “This is normal. Nothing new”
“Normal?!,” Mr House said, “I look awful! What will guests think when they see all of this?”
I frowned. “How am I supposed to know?” If guests do come, me and the other kids get sent up to our room. I can’t really know anything about people that I never meet. “Besides, guests don’t live here. They don’t see you every day like we do.”
Mr House groaned, like when Grandpa sits on the old couch. “You don’t understand,” it said. “I used to be respectable. Painted a beautiful white. Now look at me!”
“White’s boring,” I said. “It is not even a color. Also, you should be happy that I am improving.” Teacher told me that I am very good at art. Mr House must have been very bad at art to not understand.
“Improving? I wouldn’t call a swirl an improvement from a squiggly line.” It said, all huffy.
I just stuck my tongue out at it. I also curled it. New skill! No one but me in my class can do it yet. Mr House was not impressed. It just kept speaking all mumbly and rumbly like I wasn’t there. So rude. “You’ll grow up… You’ll stop… Just a few more years and you’ll stop.”
I didn’t say anything to that, but I thought, you’re wrong.
A few days later, we moved. I don’t think the Mr House knew we were leaving. Maybe Mom and Dad forgot.
Before we left, I went back inside to grab my teddy. In the corner of my room, near the floor, it was the last thing I drew. A little heart, smaller than my hand, and inside was my name. Dad said we can come back to visit someday. I hope the heart is still here when I come back.
“Bye,” I said.
Mr House didn’t say anything. It was quiet when I walked out the door. But just as I left, I think I heard it creak, real soft, like it was sighing…
Let’s bring a marker when we visit next.
And on that Day
Remembrance
When the pens have been lifted
And the pages have been dried
The gates of Heaven
Will be open wide
When those who were afflicted And brought to tears
Will be brought closer
Brought so near
To their Lord.
The One whom they remembered. Remembered Him in fear. Remembered Him in darkness. Remembered Him in tears.
Remembered all His blessings, remembered all their sins
Remembered His promise
So He remembered them.
And what better way to end
Than in the pleasure of Allah
That for the believers
Is the greatest of treasures
The treasure of Jannah
Gardens graced with flowing streams
In eternal laughter
The Home of Peace.
A reward for those who did good deeds
Those who believed And held patience in their sleeves.
A Home which they need no direction to.
A Home they know the way to.
In Jannah that is written.
But before, they still had a home
A home in this worldly life
Remembrance of the Lord?
Yeah, that feels like home. Hadi Younas
Acknowledgements Acknowledgements
Editor in Chief
Basia Lesniewska
Deputy Editor
Ruby Beasley
Assistant Editor
Talia Saeed
Events Coordinator
Yara Martins-Aguiar
Workshop Leader
Amaal Fawzi
Social Media Coordinator
Alice Davies
Welfare Officer
Melissa Stewart
We would also like to thank QMUL’s Student Union Team for their continued support.
Cover Design ~ Ruby Beasley / Basia Leśniewska
All uncredited illustrations ~ Basia Leśniewska
N0V.