Flashes of Home

Flashes of Home

By Isabella Castelo

Photographed By Camille Stahl

If I wake up at the right time each morning— around 8:30 a.m. in the early fall months—the sun catches on my renter-friendly stained glass window stickers at the exact angle to form a rainbow. It drapes over my face as I stare outside and listen to the cars racing on I-90. After it rains, and the highway is still wet, and if I try hard enough, these cars sound like waves crashing on the shore. 

I stare out the window and stretch my legs out straight so intensely my toes start to shake. A girl I once worked with told me it's grounding to stare at the sun—not damaging. Sometimes I test my limits and try not to squint, apparently connecting my soul to all fellow life forms. I never last that long and look away, blinking rapidly; I’m not one for grounding anyway. I wriggle around in my three-layer bedspread. The light blue sheet stick to my clammy feet and I eventually get too frustrated to pretend I need it. I’m left with my clumpy olive green duvet and my pink peony quilt. The green leaves match my duvet, the blue salvia-looking design matches that sheet I kicked off moments earlier, and the large pink flowers match my pink metal bed frame. 

My bed is my pride and joy. If you see me anywhere, I’d rather be there, lying in my field of flowers, under the stars—the fairy lights that I’ve had since 2020. It sits in the corner and acts like a throne for a queen who must watch all her subjects at every hour. From my bed, I have the perfect view of the endless trinkets on my window frame: the ceramic frog my 5th grade best friend gifted to me 10 years ago, my coin jar that has collected hundreds of dollars, and the flower I picked and dried from my front sidewalk lays disintegrating beside my lamp. 

Despite breaking my back to carry all the pieces of my bed and trash for my windows to my third-floor apartment, then meticulously displaying them in the exact spots they reside in my New Jersey home, I can only focus on what's different. My walls are a stark white rather than a jeweled green. There are waxy hardwood floors instead of an ugly brown shag carpet. The view outside my window is a parking lot rather than the tree I watched grow my entire childhood. 

Every year I move into my college room and every year I’m disappointed. You’d think I’d learn and ditch the dream, maybe learn to love my different spaces. However, I think we both know I’m not a lover of change, nor have I ever been. Every morning I’ll continue to scorch my retinas to try and blind myself from the details. I’ll sit there blinking, the image of my pink peonies flashing in and out, and maybe once I’ll get a flash of home.