She feels it, like an itch beneath the breast bone, slowly digging in and making it hard to breathe. The lights, though dim, are to bright on her tear swollen eyes, and she knows the sound of the hymns being piped softly into the drab room will drive her mad if the itching inside her does not.

To her right Aunt Lucinda is wailing like a banshee, and the large woman is heaving up the aisle of chairs towards her. The sight is making the feeling in her chest almost unbearable, and she tries to stand and hurry outside into the freedom of the sun, but a bony-gnarled hand reaches out and grabs her wrist before she can move.

Some ancient man, she's sure she's seen before,-probably in her childhood nightmares, is looking into her eyes and stroking her wrist with his frail fingers. He's telling her something, she can't make out the words that spill over his pink gums and fall from his sunken lips, but she knows it one of the five phrases she's heard repeated to no end this day. It seems no one can think of anything to say in the face of death.

She nods and gently pulls away from the mummified relative. Ahead of her is the door, and she races towards it feeling the itching in her throat now, threatining to choke her. Of all the places, and of all the times to have the giggles, she is horrified to find them taking over her here, at the funeral for her own father, but they are rasping the back fo her throat now, rushing toward her lips and tumbling just as she shoves through the door to the world outside. She collapses against the wall, overcome with the laughter that has no mirth, until they turn to lonely, angry sobs that bring her to her knees.

They say you can't go home again..
but I never understood,
for if home is where the heart is,
how could you ever leave?
I feel it in my being,
carry each drafty room in my heart,
each hurt and healing comfort
have layed their foundations in my psyche.
So many faces reflect in the mirrors
of my mind and echo back through
the halls of my conciousness
awakening dusty memories
draped in cloth and hidden
in locked up rooms,
I don't fear not being able to return,
but dread eternally never leaving.