home: a love letter...

Friday walked through my window past the half-shut blinds. I frowned to greet her. Tired and alone, I didn't want company. Tired and alone, I wanted the dark in between time of no day, either day, between days. Tired and alone, I crawled into my cage, staying with the slight sleep and repelling the vinegar of her day. I shut her out, threw up fences, and wandered into myself.

Do you remember when you first became my home? When you nested in me for the first time. When I first saw you as family, although your Cherokee blood was never mixed with my Czech. I remember how I'd store up thoughts to give to you. How I'd carefully write each one on the underside of my brain and wait for you to turn it over and see what I had hidden only for your eyes to touch. I remember the first time I saw you and how you'd hide your mouth to laugh. I remember knowing you like you were my mother, like I was born from your body. You were my family.

Friday walked through my window and the barricades I built didn't keep her out. You woke me up on the other end of a telephone call. "Do you hear me splashing," you asked from your bathtub.

"I hear you splashing," I flew back to my sleep.

"You sound freer today than you have in a long time, girl."

"I have a new friend and I'm happier today than I have been in a long time."

Too many years ago that would have been you. Do you remember when we first found a resting place in each other, when you first entered my conversations as a new friend? But too many years ago we ended that too. Night, no day, in between days are so much easier. You left me. Or maybe I left you. It gets so complicated when no one understands blame. And I'm content not having a bed in you anymore, tired and alone as I am.

I never told you, but a year ago, I know you called. When I was locked away in a hospital, I know you called my house looking for me. I know that you cried. "Anything, I'll do anything to save her." And you would. I love you for that.

But tired and alone, you are not my home now. Tired and alone, I came back to nest in myself.

I missed you. Did I tell you about after I left, that fall, two years ago now? Did I tell you how I was driving and I remembered what it felt like to be riding in that car while you navigated the mountains we lived in? I cried and fell apart. Pulled over, stopped. Did I tell you any of this?

"Do you hear me splashing?"

"I hear you splashing."

"The best part of living alone is being able to walk through your house naked after a shower, all the way to your closet, and never having to worry about dashing for cover," you told me between Friday's breaths.

"Oh, I don't know."

"I was reading your letters again yesterday. And I remembered how you could make me love and hate you all in one pause. But I remembered it was a long time ago, and the words, too many years past, don't hold the same truths now as they did then."

"Fridays are always the same."

"But you never get mad at me anymore."

"No, I suppose I don't."

"You sound freer today than you have in a long time, girl."

"I have a new friend and I'm happier today than I have been in a long time."

You still feel like home even though you are no longer the perch I rest on. You're still the place I cry to when everyone else tells me I'm a child to fly so low. You ground me when I tell you I'm walking on nothing. As I hold my breath and pantomime my heartache, my headache, my bloodache, you catch my fingers and snarl or sneeze, so easy what I wait for.

"So, who's your new friend?"

"He's a guy that I used to work with."

"A guy? Have you kissed him?"

"No, he's my friend."

"You want to kiss him, though, right?"

"Dear, this really isn't a place I want to stay."

Friday walked through my window and you forced me to stare her down. Daylight always seems so sour to me. Lemon. I wonder why it is we see yellow mornings, wonder how that color defined day. Brown would feel so much safer. Brown would be so much like earth.

My warm biped home, a room with walls or a plain with space could never be a place to belong. The people with the mud, thick on their hands, do they understand how safe a mobile home can be? They dig their feet, their heels, so deep in the soil, find their roots in something so steadfast. But every week Friday finds me, nestled against you, or with 40 degrees of earth between us. Every week, the sour days intrude on my life and home becomes something to navigate by, instead of a place to lay down my world. Home is a true North, a way to find directions, not a place to stop.

I navigated through you for such a long time compared to my narrow years of breath. And now, tired and alone, I can navigate through myself, aligned with what I need, and the wings on my back are home.

"You sound freer today than you have in a long time, girl."

"I have a new friend and I'm happier today than I have been in a long time."

The things that are human matter the most to me now. I used to love the shape of politics, run my hands around it until I realized it was plastic and it felt too smooth. The shallow perfume it was sprayed with made me choke. And I loved you for your broken bones and wild anger. The way you'd pause, or run blindly away with fear, or into anything with courage. Cry to leave the people that cared for you, and spit past those who didn't. You were so human and that's all I could stand to touch me.

But Friday walked through my window and ran her fake fingers through my hair. And I could taste her warm breath over my face.

"You want to kiss him, though, right?"

"Dear, this really isn't a place I want to stay."

"Well, would you if he tried?"

"Yes, but it would be so human and that would be so familiar. It would feel safe, and maybe even happy. He smiles low and smokes cigarettes. You know how I love that."

I can't stop reading this section, over and over, in Slaughterhouse-Five. It feels like home to see it again, like I've been spread across a page with words written before I was born.

I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

So it goes.

Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them.

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

I turn around because I'm human. I still love you because I don't know what else to do. I watch the destruction again and turn into a fixture, solid. I hope that makes me human. But I can keep moving forward afterward. I can break the solid sands that held me in place, and it's just as human to continue. If God hadn't been playing favorites that day, she would have kept running after she paused to understand what destruction created her.

"Yes, but it would be so human and that would be so familiar. It would feel safe, and maybe even happy. He smiles low and smokes cigarettes. You know how I love that."

"But you're supposed to love me."

"I do. But I'll never belong to you again."

Do you understand how human it is for me to want to leave the scene of the crime? I know your bed is still pressed against my lining, but I don't sleep in you now. I follow myself, not born from you anymore. I know new truths and I crave a rebirth. I want to stem from my own fire.

Friday walked through my window, and waits, playing cards by the foot of my bed. It's a bitter sour, but I know how to sweeten it.

"Finish your cigarette and we're going to hang up."

Tired and alone, I'm going to walk away from these cities, but I'll still hear you splashing. And I'll look back. I'm human too. But I'll keep my nest deep in my own pocket and migrate North, freer than I have been in a long time.




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