All the sweetest winds, they blow across the south

god bless this mess. the south is full of strife and corruption and chaos, but dear lord is it home. i haven’t been home since the fateful day i moved my life across the east coast all the way up to new england. i can’t imagine landing any place else, but i also cannot wait to be back in my humid never cold home town. i can’t wait to complain it’s cold when it’s 68°, and to say like every other word, and dear god how im ready to speak spanish in stores again.

i love florida and i love miami. i love being southern, but not even really considered the south. i love saying im from miami, but really meaning miami-dade county. all the intricacies of my childhood and my safe haven and my family. home is the yellow house in the middle of street with a pool and an old shed in the backyard that no one was allowed in but my grandfather. it’s my aunt who took me everywhere with her and dragged me all around the city at night because i couldn’t sleep and refused to stay in my room. it’s my younger cousins who i drag outside to lay on a white sheet we stole from my dad and do karaoke. it’s my godmother who turns every moment into a party, bringing not only sass but joy to every room she steps in. it’s my godsisters who are parts of me and feel like my own flesh and blood. it’s in every person i meet who so happens to be latine and know someone who knows someone who knows someone.

the city is only one part of the story. driving out to miami Miami often feels foreign. my city is homestead. it’s the city between miami and the keys. where you can point at almost any development and say i remember when it was nothing but grass. where during a particularly rainy summer our streets flooded and then neighbors swam in it only for the news to warn against this for fear of alligators. where my grandparents home housed and fed almost every member of my family and their children because family comes together and finds a way to turn a dime into a twenty to make sure everyone gets some.

calling it my hometown feels a bit detached. the city birthed me, but it didn’t raise me. it saw me through some of my lowest points in life and gave me a chance to start over. to come and be cleansed in the love of my family and my friends. to learn community with my neighbors and to see myself in new ways. it’s home in the way of choice. this is where my heart is. this is where my people are.

it kept a place for me if i chose to stay, but also told me and showed me that i could make it out in the world on my own.

in 2023 when i left my mothers house and moved out of the town that raised me i called my aunt. my aunt who had been telling me to leave the toxic situation for years told me this is the last time she would hear of me hyping myself up to leave and then never doing it. everything aligned. with god first, good intentions, and blessings of the universe i packed my entire life up in a rental car and with the help of an angel on earth, my former coworker drove me down. when i got there it was like weight lifted off my shoulders. we unloaded the car and with the drop of the final container a knot that i didn’t know was tied unraveled.

whether it was the city or my family that cocooned itself around me i couldn’t tell you. what i could tell you was that this home held me closely and loved me. loved me with not just words and thoughts and prayers, but with actions and force. it did not leave me to my own devices when i worked late, but we fought before i left for work. it did not turn its back on me when i made a mistake and leave me to figure it out. it when out of its way to push me to be my own person. to push me to think and act and be myself even when it did not understand me. it gave me grace and guidance. it loved me when i was loud and obnoxious and did not spit venom at me so terribly that i did not know how to move forward.

it wasn’t rainbows and sunshine everyday. florida has its natural disasters, but it sheltered me at times even from itself. it kept a place for me if i chose to stay, but also told me and showed me that i could make it out in the world on my own.

it loved me and it loves me. it loves me in my disagreements and in my faults. the south is my home. it is my heart. my head knows though that this love is boundless and so i can leave and come back and even if its never the same as it was it will always have a place for me. it will always hold a place for me and a part of me.

so as i tearfully pack up. stuffing my suitcase in the hopes i can sneak it past spirit airlines flight attendants i hold in my heart the knowledge and the wisdom that im leaving one home to go back to establishing one of my own wherever i may land.