What does home feel like?

My neck,
blossoming burgundy and
flush with yellow aching marks
stories told with hungry mouths.

Good food. Olive oil, fragrant and hinting,
cacophonous colours, wilted spinach bitter and fresh
and tomato reduced to a thick bloody flavour.
Sauces thick enough to stick to a spoon.

The space beneath the crook where arm meets body,
intensely personal and warm with
the way you smell. Safe. Strong. Sanctum.

Greenery dripping with newness,
emerald texture. Leaves everywhere you look
not a corner devoid of life, something
cared for and curated like art
never finished; untamed.

Dirt. Rough, granular and rich
with possibility.
You can grow here.

A chair that surrounds you,
luxurious, encompassing,
familiar. The subject of ownership
feuds time and time again.
A pedestal for small pink feet,
a platform to watch blackbirds run
heads craning forwards, suspicious and twitching.
Bluebirds drilling at peanuts.
She screams she is so in love with
the way they float through
mist and rain and air thick with
suburbia. Worms cut in two and downed
like shots. Intoxicated with satiation.

Wardrobe taking centre stage, rich pine
stained bright orange and matching the bed
by utter chance. Richer than ever I dreamed,
to have a wardrobe rooted with strength this way.
A bed and a room for her to play,
warmth rising in waves at the end of a day
waves of it, suffocating pleasant.

And books. Pungent, musty pages
wafting familiar at me.
Titles heavy with pride
they tell on me, to visitors.
Reveal secrets and wishes and hopes
pregnant with possibility –
and oh; I am gracious for the patience
in the cracked and aching spines.

 

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