You notice how easily
people say home
as if the word were muscle memory,
already furnished, lit, inhabited.
Most inherit it...
a place that answers when called.
I’ve held it a handful of times,
moments only,
usually chemically furnished.
Two: rural village path,
my mother’s hand, my sister’s,
their grip doing the holding.
Two and a half: urban concrete basement,
an “Aunt” who wasn’t,
a man prowling the perimeter.
Father.
Four: council estate,
another basement,
streets named after flowers
to mask the want.
Seven: flat above,
stepfather.
Pig.
Sixteen: sister gone.
Eighteen: mother dead.
Homeless inside two weeks.
Years of chemical absolution...
bedsits, dens, borrowed floors.
More years of liquid grace.
Then flight: new country,
new name, learned to pass.
Ireland. Built one home,
then another.
Married. Child.
Success measured in deeds.
A bungalow now, countryside,
land, quiet, money,
structurally sound, legally owned,
warm.
I am not homeless.
I am not unsettled.
I am not searching.
That is the trouble.
An asylum seeker still believes
there is a place
they might finally belong...
even in tents, queues, under threat.
I carry no such belief.
Home was never a place I lost.
It was a system never installed.
I can occupy houses.
I can love people.
I can stay.
But the thing others mean
when they say home...
that unguarded settling,
the nervous system finally exhaling...
never arrived.
Half a century.
Status resolved.
Application closed.
-UpsilonA



I’m reminded of Robert Frost, but that quote doesn’t really fit. Very distinctive piece you’ve written. Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful