I'm a stranger to my own home. Not now. It's just what this is called.

I'm a stranger to my own home.

Not 'I'm a stranger in my own home,'
which is how I have heard such a phrase uttered.
And it's not how I'm thinking now, actually.
I'm pretty content. I mean the warm, secure, happy content.
The content that is very good pajamas.
And I'm wearing terrible pajamas right now. The content is that good.

A stranger to my own home would walk around with a slight museum gait. That self-conscious pace that nonetheless shines and asks obliquely of the museum pieces and gives other patrons the room and circularity of leaves or debris caught by water tension in a slowly moving stream.

A stranger to my own home would feel like the air is different around her immediate body because there is a story there and that, you know, changes the temperature.

A stranger to my own home would gaze at her own posessions as a first-time date would in the apartment of the other. Not impolite curiousity. Not craving or disgust. Surprise is muted. Lazy day-dreams of memories with certain arrangements or objects because it's kind of fun to play that game of 'what if we do end up seeing each other and I'm on the other side of the projector and I have these constellations with everything.'

And I haven't been drinking at all tonight.
Brett and I worked on our computers and it was actually quite satisfying.
These are just elaborations on a thought and word images I had.

Now, 'I'm a stranger in my own home' would feel like the teeth-cold mix of poltergeist and child. That's not what I was thinking fondly of. Like the clip of the movie reel off-set and the popcorn that is just plastic packing peanut squeak liquid fat globules. When you can't close the generation gap and someone touches you in way they shouldn't.

A stranger to my own home is not bad even if you don't compare it to unearthed trauma.

And that's about it.
I'm going to go back to reading.
And maybe grab some more water from the fridge.