my childhood home stands where it always has.
but with each return, i find it to be less and less mine.
my shoulders have grown, splitting the seams of shirts that used to swallow me in their folds.
my room has been filled with things I have never seen before.
my cupboard overflows with someone else’s clothes.
i can shave the whiskers that have started to sprout on my lip and chin.
answer to a name that used to be mine.
i don’t know how long it’s been that way.
but the place at this table isn’t mine anymore.
just that i’ve chipped away at my smooth, rounded corners until jagged edges are all that’s left.
they scrape across the walls of a house that once held me,
cutting into the shoulders that used to press comfortingly against mine.
somewhere, though, between the worlds of consciousness and sleep,
between mind and memory, my home still stands.
i know this address by heart.
i travel down the roads,
the jingling bells of bedford trucks tinkling in my ears,
along a long dusty road, past rolling green foothills,
and through tree-lined lanes.
i pass the masjid, the barber sitting under a bent tree, the tandoor.
i turn right at the church and right before i fall asleep, there it is. the gate is still peeling and crooked, the same one that my grandfather used to open every morning and close every night. no one has replaced it.
a huge tree still obscures the front windows, its chalky purple fruits staining the driveway and my clothes. the rounded leaves and fat buds of the fragrant jasmine bushes are waxy and smooth beneath my little fingers. i can almost smell their perfume again.
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