THE IDEA OF HOME

THE IDEA OF HOME


The idea of home is difficult when it is tied to childhood,
and someone else lives in a house fallen down upon itself
like dog-eared slippers tossed on the garbage heap.
When it gets too cold to sleep outside in the tent,
I move in my brother’s old room, used as storage for decades,
My cousin Sinéad restored it to a habitable state,
repairing the walls, staining the bare floor, a miracle—
but it's more like a 2nd class hotel room than a bedroom.
The heart is empty. The hearth, full of my mother’s ashes.
Last summer, we restored her room, once my old room.
We fixed the holes the woodrats made to let in the light.
They built a nest in the basement, on top of our old photos,
framed pictures of Jesus & filled it with Xmas ornaments.
Some things never change. The ladybugs have returned
to hibernate in the corner in huddled orange masses.
This house, no longer a home filled with memory.
Her brother sleeps on the living room couch.
The house is filled with his rubble, car parts, tools,
the floor is buckling, the tiles have breached.
I cannot understand how people can live like this.
Or why he won't move into the clean bedroom
so we can get on with fixing up the rest of the house.
Once this house was a home, things had their place.
I despair each time I visit, but in order to make a living,
this is a temporary waystation to hang my head.
It is not without its problems, he is volatile, depressed,
has no social skills, no filter, and so I walk on eggs,
the floor creaks and warbles, because the joists are loose.
When I sleep in my brother’s old room, I fear the wind,
and listen for the old cypress tree to come crashing down.
It died long ago, yet it still stands during this epic deluge.
We dig ditches to reroute water, to save the driveway.
I am reminded of my childhood again and again,
how, in winter I followed my grandmother outside
to deepen the ditches, to move the water down the hill,
& how each year I got sick, chilled to the bone.
Such a profound melancholia emanates from the past.
I cannot bring it back no matter how hard I try.
In this way I am reminded that nothing belongs to us.
We belong to the earth, and nothing more.

12/30/21

MoSt challenge 3

Read it at the MoSt Zoom reading 1/11/22