When the storm comes out, my compass always points to home.

It points to the sunny shoreline of Miami.

The speckles of pastel conches and seashells on a blanket of wet sand.

The plate of baby carrots my mother would set for me on the porch.

_Growing warm under the Florida heat. _

The discordant shouts of my parents, fighting over something insignificant to me because of the dull buzz of the television in the living room hammering through my skull and deafening me.

_But there was the neighborhood girl. She was nice. _

__

Tangled pigtails and cheeks sticky with melted popsicles. The coaxing thrum of our cheap scooters against the sidewalks of the pier. The rest is nothing but a torn painting with smeared colors that are devoid of detail.

_The tape. I remember the tape. _

The cheap Scotch material wrapping around my thighs before I shrugged my khakis over them. The way they made my legs appear so differently. The same as the slim, bronzed bodies of model women posing with their neon bikinis and pearly teeth on TV ads.

Not my own.

_The house on the beach. _

This I neither love nor despise.

It is a capsule. A container for events. It has done its duty, carrying the limitless mass of good and bad. It has carried sun-warmed baby carrots. It has carried my parent’s screams. It has carried the buzz of the old television. It has carried the neighborhood girl and our cheap scooters. It has carried the Scotch tape and a continuous, infinite list of keepsakes and memories.

It is a moment.

A memory.

A dream.