House
When house is burden,
home is not refuge.
In Iowa:
I wasn’t alive for the duplex,
and my only concrete memory
of the white house on 51st
is a bag of fries on an ironing board.
Someone else had to tell me about the
roaches in the VCR.
The house on Henderson –
I recall a waterbed,
clacking plastic shoes,
a maze of furniture,
and the one time Grandpa held me
in comfort, my arms spread like wings
against his vast chest; he crooned.
Only ever the once.
In Tennessee:
First the yellow house on Forestview
where I busted my head open like a piggy bank,
where I traded my mother’s grief
for a can of Pringles and vomited
hot dogs at her feet.
Now the house on Summerville:
uncles, cousins, grandparents,
us all stuffed together like smokes in a pack,
cleaning mason jars filled with Grandpa’s
cigarette butts, applying rubbing alcohol
to his bed sores with our tiny hands.
So much time spent here –
Sam, the neglected dog, a meteor shower,
blackberries, hand-turned ice cream,
Grandpa trying to strangle Mom,
belt buckle spankings, that one
horrible day that taught my sister and I
the beauty and tranquility of a hotel room.
The house on Mohler,
rented out of desperation,
tested my core family’s limits,
and we failed.
Snakes crawled out of broken tiles
and lice became a constant companion
and mold filled in the gaps.
So a miracle occurs for the house on Blazerview,
and miracle turns to hell
in the shape of cat carcasses
and dog bite scars
and fleas with their bloodlust
and the curling white bodies of maggots.
I can’t do this one for long.
The freedom was outside on black,
burning shingles.
Foreclosed to the house on Circle.
Fresh beginnings and potential
smells like basement carpet
and looks like brightly painted red walls.
But time is funny a curse
who likes to stain bathtubs
and spill glue and stack used toilet paper
and collect things, things, things.
Out we go, my sister and I,
to our own apartment in Fox Glen.
Here goes the true test.
Am I more than a stain on the floor?
Small spaces make small messes
make two bachelorettes feel invincible.
But the house on Glen Alpine starts
to smell like sex and new love
and dirty laundry.
Pizza boxes look cute to the infatuated.
The only bathroom upstairs so far away,
he pisses outside.
So I move onto Virginia Street,
with a husband and two dogs,
with attempts like coreopsis and cup plant,
Jerusalem artichoke and black-eyed Susans.
Thousands of books leading to French doors.
But it’s a lesson thirty years long
that home is not refuge
because house is burden.
I’ve given ultimatums now
and made promises.
I will not be a stain on the floor anymore.
I’m done doling out chances to houses
who crumble into insect bodies,
petrified shits, trash bags filled with
endless thoughts and bills and photographs.
I am not a rat’s nest in a sweater
or an unclean iron skillet
or a pissed-on sketchbook.
I am my own refuge.
