Home is where I’ve been,
where I am,
and where I’m going.
It is a web of pavement,
winding tar,
trees and houses and bars,
coasting to the car’s
low and high bends,
the swinging right,
and left swing,
the speed,
the weed,
the stories
clashing now with then.
Home is crumbled brick
the city demolished years ago–
but I didn’t know it,
didn’t get that text–
the inverted field of grass
left behind a chain-link fence
that’s missing poles,
and subsequently rolled in folds,
twisted, cold, and bent.
It’s a bunch of windows
with dark holes
where some kid used to live,
and that kid and that kid;
where we used to speak secrets,
drain a keg to the music,
kiss…
where we spent a few good,
a few bad
syllables of so many moments.
Home is where I’m from,
where I am,
and where I’m going.
I’ve been gone so long,
just gone,
all these years I was just
moving on and on;
keepin’ on keepin’ on
like I am stronger
than whatever’s going on,
like there is some place
on this rock in space
where I belong.
Home is my brother’s tombstone,
the cage my heart must return to
over and over and over again
because there is no end
to this sentence,
and I will serve my time
graveside,
the rest of my life accountable
for how much I loved him;
some roots are too deep
to die.
It’s the hum and clack
of metal-grinding trains
on railroad tracks,
always within blocks of my bed
so that I can dream;
so that I can breathe through
and be numb to
the screech,
the whistle,
the beginning,
the sides of
who I’m from.
I am now closer
to the pillow at my end,
my silence,
someone weeping to my absence,
to the memories
I wrote down for them;
a few people
will think of me now and then.
I hope.
Home is where I’m from,
where I am,
and where I’m going.
