Welcome Home
You’ ll find the door open
you’ll linger like a ghost
inside rooms you don’t remember
the taste of memories on your tongue.
a simple gentle question - unanswered
would i ever understand what a home was supposed to be
how was i supposed to feel in any room, would i ever feel any different than i did when i was young? was a bathroom always tainted with the reflection of unfamiliar bodies?
i baptized myself in bathtubs, pouring cold water over my eyes until my vision blurred,
was this all there was to me?
and all that remained was the warmth on my skin, the desire to be held here, in this moment
Tender and wanting. Seen and Unseen.
i put pictures up on the wall
men biting men
enough flowers to believe in a false spring
but what of who we become in the walls of a house we recognize?
how do we change when the world outside is left to sit and watch us through warm orange windows glowing bright in the evening with our warm glowing lives?
i could wake up in the same bed, pull clothes from the same dresser, sit at the same desk and write about how none of it felt familiar because the shape of the room kept changing
somehow i was different in every way unseen, my body did not change, but the essence of my spirit has shifted. you would recognize the door. the porch swing with its fraying rope, and the color of the roses when they bloomed in spring.
the shape of my soul kept changing
Yet, within those walls was a metamorphosis. i was growing wings, i was yearning to taste the air, i was disintegrating like a ghost at dawn and re-emerging like a moth at dusk. i was, in no uncertain terms, altered.
it came in the shape of a dream
a fools errand, yet, if it worked, oh god if it worked,
i would have a home
familiar, built by my shaking hands
