HOME

“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.” – Carson McCullers

mom’s body as a house

mom’s house as a body

I want to leave and come back

leave and come back

leave and come back

one thousand times

but even that

wouldn’t be enough

my house is my body and

my body is my house and

I can’t bear to be away

long enough to get

anywhere I want to go

in the morning I stumble

down the steps

past the wisteria vine

which came back

to life after 5 years dead

the kind of miracle we pray

and pray for

knowing full well

we’ll never get it

I’m in the chicken coop

sloshing tea on woodchips

smearing poop

on my nightgown

as ten chicks totter out

from beneath their mom

her wings a literal wall

her whole body their house

meanwhile my mother

is a powder in a plastic bag

resting on a chest of drawers

inside my house

my mom’s house as my house

my house as my mom’s house

yellow now, not blue,

mine now, not hers

and then there’s our bodies

my body wants to be a house

with sturdy wooden walls

a base to leave from

and return to

a place to sleep deeper

than you’ve ever slept

and to wake up