Poem: Upon the Death of Home

Maybe this spring will make more sense than last spring, when nothing seemed right at all. (photo: adamaecompton)

Humans have a lot of social conventions that they use to memorialize both positive and negative events: They throw “showers” for women who are close to giving birth, they have “receptions” at “weddings,” and they have “funerals” for when humans die. But what do humans do when the place they call home can no longer be called home?

There’s no social convention for the death of a home… it seems a private sorrow, not able to be understood by humans outside the home. The loss is both a loss of place and a loss of future memories that have no chance to be made in that place.

There’s something about home and human that cannot be separated– all humans seek home. And when that’s no longer possible? Read on– I asked my master, and he answered in verse:

Upon the Death of Home

I’m as empty

as this house:

Floors bare

as my heart,

Walls blank

as my eyes,

Rooms hollow

as my gut.

 

I’m as lifeless

as this house:

Stairs still

as my breath,

Windows closed

as my mouth,

Stoves cold

as my memory.

 

I’m as nothing

as this house:

No longer

beating,

No longer

comforting,

No longer

knowing…

 

…what it’s like

to be human,

to be home.