It is your sanctuary.  Your refuge from the world, from the bustle and noise.  The quiet place you rest your mind and nourish your soul, peeling back the layers of the day until all that is left is you. Your tender skin exposed, breathing freely now that you've cast off your thicker skin, your armor, and hung it in your closet, where it waits, ready to be donned again the next day.

You ponder this, as you slide your key into the front door, so grateful for the coming hours of solitude.  Inside, your home smells faintly of pineapple, thanks to the fruit ripening in the ceramic bowl on your kitchen counter. 

You take one breath, then two, inhaling the sweet scent and taking in all your familiar things: the tea mug left just so in the kitchen sink waiting to be washed, the turquoise knitted blanket folded haphazardly on your ruby couch, the rolled yoga mat leaning against the corner of your bookshelf. 

These things, your things, they are your home.  They fill up your space with memories of collecting seashells on the Californian and Italian shores.  Of books read and reread, first with dread sometimes and then delight as life experience seasons your understanding of what makes stories worth telling, worth reading.  Then there is cooking with family, the warmth in your kitchen a by-product of the hot stove and long loving dinners. 

You wrap these memories around you.  You admire your things.  You breathe in the homey scents of pineapple and lavender, content to once again tuck into your sanctuary for the evening.