June warm and summer hazy when she returns to visit
it’s somehow worse that she recognises it
though the place which was home had changed in her absence,
and stopped being home a while ago.
All the people she knew who used to live here have died or moved away;
somewhere bigger,
somewhere better.
The street stands empty and all she can think of is that
poem she loves so, about the poor woman with the sagging veins 7
who was too tired to remember to love her children.
Here is the truth about longing:
it takes a long time to pack up a home.
Slow, an ache that gets to you after a while, like bad news.
Home, where is home?
This, she knows, is what she was waiting for.
All the things she hoped would happen and never did,
everything always ends up the same;
there she is again in the same place, always in the same place.
What growing up is, what she discovered growing up to be. She’d like
to take off her bones and leave them on the rack by the door.
She’d like—
Well. That doesn’t matter anymore.
Here is the truth about longing:
the real story about going home never actually gets told.
You see, no one knows how to tell it.
Home, she’d like a story about home?
Alright, alright then.
Cracks in the paint, insect shells under the mat.
We wrapped plates and cups in newspaper.
Bundled sheets and picture frames into boxes.
Smell of the kitchen in the morning.
Photos tacked to the fridge.
An old, lost smile.
I know, I know. You miss it. I miss it, too.
Ivy, empty shoe rack by the door. That’s how missing things work, you think you’re
upset about the other thing, some other thing, but really,
it’s always the same.
The shower: never the right temperature.
Line of dust on the sill behind the sink.
Rickety chair in the middle of the garden, all overgrown, rambling roses, old
fruitless apple tree, ivy over the fence, forget-me-not like carpet everywhere, everywhere,
crawling up the legs of the chair so if we tugged the chair would coe away
trailing roots and soil and buried,
forgotten things.
When we moved, we wrote letters; you wrote a letter
I wrote a letter.
The letters were buried in that garden, with our love,
all our love.
The kitchen, all packed away. Dust wiped off the sill behind the sink.
All neat, but the garden was too m e -e-e
e-e-e- - - -
ss y.
The truth, she’d like the truth? Alright, alright then.
The chair: pulled up. We were right, it came dragging roots and soil. Ivy
yanked off the gate and the apple tree hacked down, stuff sprayed over the severed
stump so it turned a funny orange. Forget-me-nots, uprooted with our love, all our love.
It all went into those machines that chop everything, like a blender, loud
loud noise then lots of mush.
Here is the truth about longing:
Home, it haunts,
like how the chair was pulled up, and the whole garden came away with it.
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