Tracie Adams

flash fiction

Photo by Majestic Lukas

Home is Not a Place

Written by Tracie Adams

I brought too many bags. I know that. I see the looks on their faces. Even the kid in Room 14 gives me a look like she’s counting them, doing algebra in her head.

I laugh it off, “These old bones need options,” but the truth is simpler. When life teaches you that comfort is never guaranteed, you learn to pack your own. Pillows that don’t smell like strangers. Cream for my joints. My good scarf, the silky leopard print one that makes me look like I’ve got it together. And of course, the pills.

I move careful as a Sunday school teacher in white stockings—slow enough to look deliberate, quick enough to pretend it ain’t because of the pain. The doctors told me to “take it easy,” like I’ve ever had that luxury. Bless their ignorant hearts. Folks around here tilt their heads at me the way Southerners do when they’re worried but don’t want to get involved. Like I’m a casserole somebody dropped on the church steps.

I’d have gone home to family if I had any to begin with. Truth is, home’s more rumor than place. Illness has a way of plucking you right outta the world, sets you aside like the milk that won’t mingle with the cream, no matter how much you stir.

When the motel manager hands me the key to the suite, I smile at him like I’m doing him a favor by taking it. I don’t mean to cut in front of the single mother behind me. I swear, that kid looked at me like I stole her favorite teddy bear. I didn’t know she’d been promised the room. When she lowers her voice, something inside me goes cold with guilt. I want to hand it back. I almost do. But lately I’ve been clinging to whatever small, good thing comes my way.

Once I shut the door behind me, though, all that bravado falls flat. I sit on the edge of the bed and breathe like I’ve been underwater for too long, my lungs too full and my heart an empty tomb. The room smells like lemon cleaner and mildew, but it’s still better than the medical office where the last man I loved told me he wasn’t “equipped for all this.” He meant me. My body. The uncertainty of it. I can be sad about it all I want but that ain’t changing a thing.

I pull the small amber bottle from my purse. Count. Recount. I pop one of the powdery tablets in my mouth and swallow hard. I tell myself I’m fine. Say it out loud to the empty room. I reckon I should count my blessings that being alone has its upsides. Ain’t no foster mothers or ex-boyfriends around to tell me I’m too much. Too high maintenance, that one. Too needy. Too messy.

I catch myself touching my temple, a habit I picked up after the doctor traced the shape of something he said we should “keep an eye on.” I keep plenty an eye on it. I just don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know much of anything, apparently. Too many words. Too much hot air.

Maybe I messed up again thinking I’d find something solid here in this roadside dive at the butt end of creation. What can I say? The Lighthouse Motel seemed promising. Even if the dingdang lighthouse strobes on and off making sure I’ll never sleep through a night.

The first night, I hear the woman next door crying—muffled, controlled, the kind that hurts more because it’s meant to be hidden. I press my hands against the wall, not sure I have anything to offer. But I can’t just lie there and do nothing. Connection costs me more than it used to, but I still reach for it.

I tell people I’m just passing through. I tell myself that too. I want a place where I can be tired without apologizing. Where my secrets don’t feel bigger than my future. Where someone might look past the shine I put on for the world and actually see me. I’m tired of being alone, no one to reflect back to me whatever it is they see in my eyes. I want proof that I’m not done yet.

Truth is, I don’t have anywhere else to be but right here. The tv’s been on the same station since I got here. Can’t find the remote. So, the Hallmark channel loops the same white teeth, same storybook marriages, same horse ranches and dinners around stone fireplaces. Every perfect plastic family reminding me of my empty spaces, the hollow that grows deeper and wider by the minute. It’s almost too much.

Tracie Adams, a retired educator and playwright, writes flash fiction and memoir from her farm in rural Virginia. She is the author of two essay collections, Our Lives in Pieces and Not Finished Yet. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, longlisted at Wigleaf Top 50, and published widely in literary magazines including Cleaver, Dishsoap Quarterly, SoFloPoJo, Fictive Dream, and more. Visit tracieadamswrites.com and follow her on X @1funnyfarmAdams.

(Good Heritage Press, 2026)

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