Prompt: My home makes me think of...

My home makes me think of...


summer. the way it always blows gracefully through white curtains and urges us outside. Running barefoot through the yard, skipping across the hot tar driveway to the next island of grass. The nagging of a knotted bikini tied behind the nape of my neck. Sweating glasses of iced tea. The cricket hush dusks. Sheets hung on the line, blowing crisp in the breeze.
"That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy. Wild apple blossoms everywhere. Emerald green like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me."

The way the rug felt when I was young and used to slide down the stairs headfirst, steadying myself with my arms. The carpeting smelled like burn, and it was cream colored and rough. My knees were always red after those headfirst slides.

Daisy crowns and watermelon, even though I never liked watermelon. Lupine reaching its purple arms through the meadow.

My father's painting sweatshirt. Stained with blue and whites, mostly, yellowed in the armpits, smelling like cars and gasoline, heat and garages.

Sitting in her window seat, how I'd fold my legs to my chest and listen to her in the dark. Our giggles would always reach downstairs, but it was always worth those late night conversations about who was cute, and what it might be like to smoke a cigarette, and what did we want to be when we grew up? Conversations in the dark. Laughing at midnight until it was time to go to school again. Her big eyes looking up to me, always.

Smoking a cigarette in my bedroom at age nearly 23. Watching how out of place its smoke looked against my teenaged walls. The feeling of being outgrown, as though my legs are suddenly too long for my bed, as though I am trying to squeeze myself into a doll house. Staring at bills piled up beside a vintage paddington bear jewelry box and my 7th grade music collection.

My Ithaca home(s) remind me of...

those sideways conversations we'd have at 2 a.m. Me, lying on the floor with my feet propped up against the sofa. You, beside me, taking the same stance. Us, talking about the past, the present, and the future, and all the things found in between.

incense ash. the way i'd spend hours watching the smoke twirl itself beautifully around my pencil that needed to write but couldn't. the way i'd let it fill the tiny room until my roommates complained it smelled like a church sanctuary. how the ash would pile on my desk, and it'd be weeks before i'd brush it away. remains of yesterdays.

A rainy day where I walked to town in the downpour. How when I returned home, I stripped off my clothing and hung it over the balcony in a thunderstorm. How I watched that storm from the balcony & watched it wash away the rotting pumpkins. Blasting Neko Case, glasses of wine, eating only pieces of toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The puddles that'd form from our boots in the kitchen, and my soggy socks and how each boy that kissed me had horrible breath. Being alone.

A rooftop where we'd watch the fire station and wonder about the passerby. How we carried pumpkins all the way from Wegmans and carved their insides onto that rooftop, and you propped your rickety speakers against the windows and turned it up loud. Melted candle wax - how we'd talk for hours, and you'd pull my hand to your heart, sometimes.

Love letters in London. A yellow room with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. A lace curtain billowing in an early spring. A constant siren, a cracked coffee pot. Marijuana and our clothing hanging on the doors, the chairs, the sofas and doorknobs, our socks hanging neatly from crooked drying racks. Hardwood flooring and their singing and strumming, the weaving of melodies that saved me when I started to Miss Things. Talking ourselves to sleep, always.

Watching a sweat bead drip between my breasts. Blue dresses and the tickle of grass against my bare legs. White wine in my throat and the sun rays cradling my dizzy head. Tangled bare feet, tangled in four years of laughter. Gulping sunshine together. My beautiful friends.

Watching winter from a window on Prospect St. Passing green smoke between fingers and eating scrambled eggs in bed and letting the snow fall and watching the orchids you loved to take care of grow tall. In those hazy days, the snow was always so sharp - I was always looking for it, those pieces of reality falling silently around me, cold and welcoming, breaking a high fever.

These are all snippets of various places I've known well, that resonate most vividly in my mind when I think of home. It's very nostalgic, I know. Too much so, and part of me wishes I'd just written a poem. In these, I found myself linking many of these "homes" with various important (& in some cases, unimportant) people in my life.