when i showed him my childhood bedroom for the first time

I was paranoid that I’d left embarrassing pictures on the walls.

After all, this was my safe space growing up, a place where

I could tape all of my colorful birthday cards to the sides of my dressers 

And pretend like I was still friends with the people who

wrote them, their words a blurred chorus of expired promises.

A place where I could stack books I’d read and reread

dozens of times in a brilliant mess on my desk, a mess

That only I could understand from having organized and

Shuffled and rearranged it so many times. A place where I still had

stuffed animals on my pillow, a grey moose and pink cat and

plush doll that helped me sleep through every rough night,

when I could hardly see the faint outlines of the bedposts 

And closet doors and piles of clothes in the darkness.  

My bulletin board was still covered in track medals

that hardly look gold or silver anymore, inspirational quotes I no longer

believe in, notes reminding me to read some required

book for school (I still haven’t read it) and reminders to

never give up on myself. At least the second ones worked.

But when I showed him my childhood bedroom for the first time

He sat on the bed and pressed the stuffed moose to his chest,

Helped hang up the old clothes that had fallen on the floor like

overworn memories that don’t fit the girl I am now, and

didn’t notice the embarrassing pictures I had forgotten to hide,

He beamed at the one of me at senior homecoming

because that was the same girl whose room he was standing in,

the same girl who had found her true home in his warm embrace,

A home that was desperate for her embarrassing moments and her

Stuffed animals and her love for hand-drawn birthday cards

and her affinity for re-reading the books that had helped her realize, before it was her own,

what love truly is. Maybe she had finally found it.