hands like houses
"how do you feel?"
she asks me
running her fingertips
through my hair
and her lips
down my neck
as sunlight leaks
in through the window
and pours onto
the wrinkled sheets
wrapped around
our lukewarm skin
the question
dangles in the space
between us
so we meet in
the middle
day eighty-three
but i have known her
for decades
my first word
was her last name
i grew up
beside her bones
i feel
like i grew up
in her arms
i feel like i'm
at home
Home
As a child, i've always called our house,home. But as i grew up i've realized that a house is not a home.
Home is a feeling. It isn't a place.
Home is where you feel safe,comfortable, loved.
As an adult,our house that we often call home is just as cold as winter. We live together but we don't see each other, we don't talk unless being asked. We don't mingle. It's like living in a building alone.
But i have been helping this orphanage since highschool, that is, what i call HOME. Whenever i see the kids smiling,laughing and playing. I get this overwhelming feeling in my heart that can never be replaced by anything. People there appreciate even the smallest of things. Even a candy could make a little girls' eyes spark so bright.
Home is where your heart is.
And i've found another HOME. Here in Prose. People are supportive,understanding and more. And being part of something that you share a common interest with is just indescribable.
White Picket Fence
By the time our daughter was born, it was obvious that our little garden apartment could no longer contain us. We’d shoved her crib into her big brother’s room, and wedged her changing table in a corner next the closet (the door of which could no longer enjoyed its full range of motion). With her dresser was in the kitchen, we were bursting at the seams.
After scraping together every nickel and cashing out our paltry investments, we managed to buy our first house in the suburbs. In Westchester County, no less (the perceived Shangri-La of New York State). Oh, we had arrived!
There were, however, some weird moments during those early days.
Before we moved in, we had the whole place painted and the hardwood floors resurfaced. Once, when I showed up to check on the progress, the painter greeted me with, “You must be the lady of the house.” It seems absurd, but I really didn’t understand the question. I stood there, mouth agape. He tried again, “Are you the homeowner?”
“Who me?” Then, as if a hypnotist snapped his fingers in front of my face, I woke up. “Why, yes. Yes! I am the homeowner!”
Homeowner. Such a glorious word! It stirred up such a sense of security, such pride. But it still hadn’t fully sunk in.
Finally, it was move-in day and I began unpacking. Some of our toiletries were too tall to fit in the medicine cabinet, so I set them aside and considered buying a bathroom storage piece of some sort. Two days later (two!), it occurred to me that I was allowed to adjust the shelves because I owned that medicine cabinet and the wall it was attached to, and every other wall surrounding it.
But the weirdness didn’t stop there. My voice was changing. I caught myself speaking from the back of my throat through clenched teeth, “Kids! We’re going to Bed Bath & Beyond for home décor!” Here in Westchester, we call this affectation “Larchmont Lockjaw,” (think: Thurston Howell, III, from Gilligan’s Island, reminiscing about the perfect dry martini to his wife, Lovey).
What the hell was happening to me? “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” said my inner voice. “You haven’t been coronated! All you did was buy a house, ya crazy bitch!”
But it was hard to resist. I’d always dreamt of owning; I watched all those “interior design on a dime” types of shows, read Martha Stewart Living, kept a scrapbook of paint colors and garden layouts… I hadn’t just bought a house. I bought a dream. And we were the perfect American family: Mommy, Daddy, Son and Daughter. Now all we needed was a dog and a second car. A minivan! But those things would have to wait, since we’d sunk our last sou into our new abode.
At some point, I pulled myself together and came back to my senses. It might have been on the third day we’d lived there and my husband took a bedtime bath. In the morning, we discovered that the tub leaked, water poured through a light fixture in the kitchen, collapsing part of the freshly painted ceiling onto the newly refinished floor. Or maybe it was around Christmas when a chimney sweep called, claiming to have worked for the previous owner. Since this WAS my first rodeo, I let him come and he scammed me out of $1200.
Ah yes, homeownership is a dream many of us aspire to. But only the strong survive when the shit gets real.
We stayed in that house for six years and, through all of it, I was happy there. Some nights I’d stand out front gazing at it; its forest green shutters, its bright white cedar shakes, the house number I’d custom ordered from LL Bean, light streaming through the gauzy curtains of our dining room… On those nights, I wished my arms were long enough to wrap around and hug it, for it wasn’t just our house anymore. It was our home.
Home.
Words spoken in hushed voices
Breaking hearts one by one
Everybody looking at me
No, not at me
Through me to what I was
At least what I was supposed to be
To them I was an idea
A person to manipulate
A person to use through everything
Not a child, a toy
What they didn't realize
Is that toys are very breakable
My skin was easy to tear apart
My heart was shattered
A million broken pieces
Scattering the floor.
I was broken
I am broken
I don't know how to fix myself
I don't know if I want to be fixed
But then I saw your eyes
Bright as the lake on a sunny day
Your heart was whole
Welcoming me into your life
You somehow put the pieces back together
But I am still lost
And I know I don't deserve you
You deserve the world
And I am not even a pebble
Your love was easy to give me
But it was hard for me to push away
Yet I did it without flinching
I am broken and hurt
The world tore me to pieces
I don't know why you came back
But I don't want to fight it anymore
In your arms I feel safe
I feel loved
I feel at home.
Home..
Home is a place you feel safe. It is where all your troubles disappear and happiness overpowers them. Home is somewhere you won't be judged. A place you are loved. It's is comfort.
That is what home should be but unfortunately some have ruined the place WE called home a some time in our lives.
Heart & Mind
My home consists of a beautiful, imaginative mind.
It isn't a house you've lived in for a while.
It isn't college, school, dorms, apartments.
It's my mind.
Although my mind could be a mess at times,
It's still home.
My home also consists of a warming and loving heart.
Home is where the heart is.