how to build a home out of other people’s words

I have a house. It’s nestled in the corner of my mind, cozy and covered like a secret beneath the canopy of old, whispering trees. Ivy curls up its stone walls, and wildflowers bloom in tufts along the path, untamed and softly glowing. The roof is moss-covered, slanting just enough to collect fallen leaves in the autumn.

Light filters in through small windows, golden and warm, dancing across wooden floors that creak like they’re telling stories.

It’s almost entirely hidden — my private refuge, half-dream, half-memory, tucked away like a forgotten treasure only I know how to find.

The front door is bright red and looks largely worn. The edges of the large door are browned, slightly burned as if singed by time. Or maybe by something more deliberate. The doorknob is gone, replaced by a large matchbox bolted in its place. It crackles faintly when touched, like it remembers fire. It feels like a riddle, a dare; but instead of fear, it offers a strange comfort. A soft-burning truth.

It had a few words on the matchbox, Fahrenheit 451.

The entryway led to large chambers.

Each room is built from borrowed words, lines I never wrote but quietly made my own. Wallpapered in sentences that once stopped me mid-breath, etched with fragments of poems and stories that lingered long after I closed the book. A lyric hums from the floorboards. A quote curls along the edge of a windowpane like condensation.

Some rooms are warmer than others. One glows softly, lined with the voice of Ocean Vuong: “The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed.” I go there when the world feels too loud, when I’ve been told I’m too much, or not quite enough. The room doesn’t fix anything. It just lets me be, gently reminding me I’m still becoming.

The kitchen smells like oatmeal raisin cookies. Arundhati Roy simmers like tea on the stove, her sentences sharp and fragrant in the steam. Charlotte Brontë rests on the counter, her spine slightly cracked, her presence quieter but no less fierce. I read her while standing barefoot on cold tile: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me” The kettle begins to hum. The room is warm, defiant, and entirely my own.

It isn’t a home in the traditional sense. There are no family portraits, no photographs on the mantle, no fridge magnets or stellar report cards on the fridge. But there are post-it notes with things I underlined at six, then thirteen, then seventeen. There are receipts with fragments scribbled in the margins. There is circling on words so vigorously that it turns into silent prayer.

I used to be embarrassed by how often I lived in the shadows of other people.
In school essays. In conversations. Even in isolation, I was never alone.
But how else was I supposed to make sense of the world, if not by borrowing language from those who had already survived it?
Some people inherit thrones. I inherited metaphors.

And with those, I built walls that didn’t crumble, windows that opened outward, a door that knew when to close.
And with those, I built a roof.

There is a living room in this house, soft-lit and filled with sadness. That’s where The Secret Garden blooms. That’s where I sit on the floor and reread the part where Mary finds the key, hands trembling, not knowing yet that what she’s about to open will change her. Every time I read that, someone I’ve loved flashes through my mind, people who opened locked things in me without meaning to.

Sometimes, I move furniture around. I take lines from a novel I once hated and learn to love them. Except Wuthering Heights, I keep a copy on the shelf purely to mock when I run out of things to do. I let old quotes fall away like cracked wallpaper. The house evolves, like I do.

And sometimes I invite people in. People who say things like “I didn’t know anyone else felt that way.” People who leave behind their own scraps of language. And suddenly, the house grows another room.

To build a home out of other people’s words is not to live unoriginally or cower in their presence, I realize now.
It is to live a life of love, connection, and shared understanding, where every voice shapes the walls, and every story becomes part of the foundation.
To understand that language is a gift, and some homes are best built from what you’ve been given.

So I walk through my house every now and then, sweeping up fallen syllables and collecting unattended vowels, rearranging chapters, rereading the pages with multicolored tabs and even more colorful annotations. I keep the door unlocked. I keep the porch light on.

And every time I feel lost in the world, I come back to the house.

The red door is always waiting.

Over the fireplace, there are pages with my own words: fragments from my folder labeled ‘writings,’ old Substack posts, half-formed thoughts in my ‘notes’ app that never met another individual, and sentences that felt like they mattered once and might again. There’s a large circular sofa wrapped around it, always warm, always soft.

I’d invite you in, but if you’re reading this, you’re already here.

Welcome, I’d say, but I’ve already been rambling to you without introduction — pardon my lack of manners.
So instead, I’ll just say:
Have a safe journey back.
Take a line with you, if you’d like. Maybe build a room of your own.