home is no body and no place

it’s sometimes the moonlight

or making the train on time

it’s soft blankets on rooftops

and nights that do not end

 

bitter coffee from a place

you’ll only visit once

 

home, casa, is a border

that expands and contracts in non linear,

non sequential waves

 

sometimes hurt is home

sometimes displace is home

sometimes someone you don’t want to be with

is home

on a hammock and the subway

the front seat of a cab

 

on opposite sides of a museum wall

 

home is wanting to remember

and being able to forget

 

unfulfilled goodbyes

and other furniture

inhabiting a place I wish I’d see again

 

my veins,

translucent snakes of clay

like the currents of the river given free rein

shift and pump a substance

that carries stories I wish I could always see

 

of families, of fights, of tears and compromise

 

how many have you forgotten,

how many have forgotten you?

 

it is no longer my birthday

and my parents are still in another country

in a house that is no more, not yet a home

 

a distance I’ve come to terms with

like ants caught in drops of amber

and a trance

seeing lives revolve

at haphazard speeds

 

hanging sorrows like herbs

on a fridge, unknown, untitled

 

picking lemons for your mother now for yourself

 

a decapitated deer dancing in the water

and twenty heartless beats

 

and my body,

like a lover that loves themselves best,

slips away before dawn,

perhaps, but likely not,

with regret