Home Is So Sad: Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at what things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

I've had to read this over a few times to get what it's really saying.

However, I chose it because yesterday, when Terri left, I came back inside and felt so sad. Looking at her tea-stirring spoon left on the counter; her towel, damp from a shower; her shoes on the floor. Just as she had left it.

I had to remind myself, she's coming back! For some reason over the weekend I had thought about how sad I used to get in Finland... it was such a long time to be away from everyone, and every time I talked to my parents on the phone (once a month), I would get so sad afterwards, missing them, filled with emptiness. I had that feeling when she left, as if I wouldn't see her again for seven months. She's coming home Thursday night. We'll get used to this. But home is just not home without her.