This Home

The light of this home flickers
It slowly burns away in existence
As it seeks hope in the dimness

This home awaits the return of its Beloved
It is distant in the darkness
As it steadily collects dusts of memories

It desires to be furnished in Love
Decorated in Laughter
Illuminated in Light

Its closed windows search for openness
The wind to carry through inside
And a ray to brighten its fade

So, Hafiz tells you to find its keys
To uncover the pathway to entry
And unlock the door of your home

— Hediya Sizar

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I wrote this poem in 2021, during one of the darkest seasons of my life: alone in New York, in the aftermath of a pandemic that asked everyone, all at once, the same question I had been asking myself for years. Where is home?

I had lived in many homes, enough that I once drew a map of them in the back of a journal, arrows tracing every place I had ever unpacked a suitcase and called, for a while, my own. But no matter how many addresses I could name, none of them fully answered the question. I began to understand that home was never really about the walls.

This year, the poem returned to me.

Amid a world grieving, homelands in despair, and my own search for what home truly means, these words felt alive again. They brought me back to something I had written years ago: that the only thing that truly matters in this life is your heart, how you tend to it, and how it moves through the world.
Perhaps that was the answer I had been searching for all along.

Home is not simply a place.
Home is the heart.

Looking back, I realize that House of Leyli was born from this longing: the longing to return to ourselves, to one another, and to something sacred within. 

In many ways, this poem became our manifesto. It is a reminder to uncover the pathway inward, unlock the door of the heart, furnish it with love, and let in the light.