Homecoming

Recorded as part of the Inspired by Her exhibition, 2026 Orana Every Woman Festival, Dubbo NSW. Written by Nisaba Merrieweather. Read aloud by Erifili Davies.

Sunlight like honey pours, slow and sticky, across the Warrumbungles. I pick up the pace slightly to get home before nightfall. By the time I walk in my door, it will be more than ten hours on the road. My body aches but my soul sings as my car picks its way through the scrub and the fields. The air smells good again.

Right on sunset my house is waiting, closed but welcoming, smelling of old timber and summer heat. I push doors open and bags inside.

While I was away, I wrote very little new material on my current semi-autobiographical novel of a woman dealing with being a grandparent having never had a grandparent of her own. Instead, I played with a three-year-old who would not let me hold the week-old, picked up toys, and tried to cook meals in an unfamiliar kitchen.

I don’t like sleeping in strange beds, and I never feel as if a strange shower can get me clean. Before I even think about unpacking, I have a shower and sit down, my mind as empty as a Waterfords decanter.

I do not understand this thing called love. I know it changes, and not always for the better. I am relieved to be away from the family: I can love them better at a distance. I sometimes try to feel guilty about this, but the guilt simply will not come.

The only certainty, the only love that I know has never changed and will never change, is the love that my house, an inanimate object, feels for me. I will always come home to a warm welcome. I will never be judged on my conversation, my behaviour, or my clothes. I will always be protected, wrapped up, and sheltered. I cannot ask for more.

Nisaba Merrieweather is a Dubbo-based writer and poet, and president of the Outback Writers’ Centre. Her work explores themes of mysticism, spirituality, identity, LGBTQI experience, and marginalised perspectives, often with dark humour and rich symbolism. She has published two books of poetry, two novels, a book of short stories and a memoir, and has won or placed in more than 70 online poetry competitions.

Erifili Davies read both of Nisaba’s works for the exhibition — COVID Lockdown and Homecoming — as well as contributing her own historical fiction monologue, Tin Town Tess.