MOVING OUT (Original Poem)

A Poem for Those who are Losing Their Homes

by JGrace

MOVING OUT

There are some homes

you can never leave.

Their grass will always be greener.

You walk on floors

connected

to the center of the earth.

The water from their taps

come from the spring

of your deepest dreams.

The trees have grown beside you,

and you know you would

never cut them down.

Is it my imagination, or are those palms

drooping lower? Edges of shrubs starting

to brown? Is this the way yards mourn?

Some houses you can never leave.

You move the furniture out

but the pieces remain, invisible.

and now your footsteps

patter

across rugless expanses

Butterflies fly in and out,

oblivious.

They don’t live here anyway.

The patio, empty of furniture,

is a striped shadow of minutes

ticking away.

Draw the curtains over unmet dreams:

that book you never got

to write,

the lover who was once

in your bed

who never came back.

The house holds your orgasms

as they echos through empty rooms

looking for you.

Some houses you can never leave.

They come back to taunt you as you

look for a new house,

lovely and pale, but most inferior

with too much dust,

creaking and reeking of the past owners.

They are pale, mere shadows

of the real arches and posts

that drove your life home,

as you bustled in and out

without ever thinking

you would leave.

You almost wish you had burned it down

that time you charred beans

filled it with smoke,

and now you are alarmed

with every ounce of longing

as you close the door behind you.

You do not see but it is breaking,

ready to follow you

with wood and beams clattering in a parade

like cheerleaders urging you to find

new land

and a steady spot.

You swing open the gate

but you too start

to break.

No wonder, the new owners

won’t feel at home.

Because your spirit has never left.

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