Questions
What makes a house a home?
Maybe it's the oil drip stain at the driveway that never washes away
the front door
the metal rusting gate
the doorbell that doesn't work
Past the coat rack
and the infrared glow of the lizard tanks
the bearded dragon I’ve had since the 6th grade
the chipped tile in the kitchen floor
the groan of the old water heater
with the pilot light that keeps going out
What constitutes ownership?
Spending most of your time in the arsenic green bedroom
that was your great grandfather's room
long before it was yours
his guitar still reverberating through the walls after all those years
On the side of the house
the jasmine you planted
after your father uprooted the roses grown by your great grandmother
What makes land property?
In the backyard
the tree houses your dad built with no permit
resting strong in the arms of pine trees
that dropped pinecones
that you and him collected for arts and crafts
Can a physical space be more than just a space?
In the other bedrooms you find
gossip and magazines shared between sisters
Bunk beds in shared rooms
turned single twins
turned full size mattress, one upstairs, one downstairs
Drywall peeking through the paint
smoke damage
that casts a permanent shadow the wall
from burning incense on the ancestor altar
Will they hear our lives echoing in the floorboards?
Deep within the floorboards
you find your parents stepping inside their home with you as a newborn from the hospital
the site of your first steps
the last step of the stairs where you fell and busted your knee once you were old enough to run
You find baby teeth
a mouth full of questions
Your fifteen year old self with fifteen cavities
You find wisdom teeth, all four impacted
you are packing your things
in and and out
only come around if you have to
you were old enough to run
so you left
What do we really own?
You went back
and you found something new
Rent overdue
yellow eviction notices
the money your father buried for an emergency
makes its appearance on your kitchen table
You find a predatory housing market
threatening to tear apart your home
Your family on the verge of shatter, break, fragment
like the cracks in the concrete
or the splinters in the door frame
because this is still the house that your family comes to
for kickbacks, Sunday dinners, sports games, holidays
You see
home is the first place
you learn to both run from and run to
Home might be bittersweet
but it sure does kicks your teeth in
to see your life reduced to a stack of boxes
become cardboard coffin of childhood memories
liquidate your assists
the grand sum
of the air that you breathe
and the skin on your back
What makes a house a home?
What constitutes ownership?
Who will sleep in my room next?
Will they water the plants or uproot them from the ground?
Are we being uprooted too?
What makes land property?
Can a physical space be more than just a space?
Will the next people that move in hear the stories in the wall?
Will they hear our lives echoing in the floorboards?
What do we really own?
I float out the door
I don’t get any answers