It's Been so long.

As the car slowed to a stop at the edge of the driveway, she gazed out through the window, her breath catching as the familiar outline of her childhood home came into view. Ten years of foreign streets, crowded airports, and faraway sunsets dissolved in an instant beneath the quiet weight of memory. The porch light flickered in the dusk like a beacon, casting golden hues across the chipped steps and overgrown rose bushes that had once framed her every summer. She didn’t move to open the door just yet—only sat in stillness, letting the silence settle around her like a blanket. From the safety of the car, she studied the house as if it were both a relic and a promise, realizing that while the world had changed her, this place had waited, unchanged, to welcome her home.