A house is just a house
Until you belong to it.
You don’t own houses
They own you.
They own your first times and traditions,
All parental admonitions.
The smell of good home cooking has arisen
The aroma forever lingers in the air.
You’ve marked your scent on your home.
BUT
A house is just a house until you belong to it
Behind each closed door and wavering curtain
Are muffled screams unheard
And a lowly sinner’s vision
Daddies turn into drinkers
Older brothers experiment with gun triggers
Little sisters turn into food bingers
And purge
And no one to guide her because although your mom dodged your verbal bullet
she was lurked out of her car seat into the windshield.
The body confirmed.
Everyone, like soldiers,
feels disillusioned,
Hungry,
And hurt.
A house is just a house until it becomes
a warzone
A personalized Iraq or Afghanistan
Resembling the Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by Japan.
A house is just a house
Until you discover its chaos.
A mess of unpaid bills
Lying like dead bodies on the floor.
A house is just a house
Because you no longer belong.
Eviction after eviction
Waving the white flag to addiction.
You just want to go home.
So, you rush to your safe haven
Just at the corner of metacarpal and phalanges lane
At the end of your mangled finger tips
(a result of battle)
As emotion pangs inside us
Your fingers bleed ink onto a papyrus
Venting and inventing new ways to escape before dusk
You’ve found your peace
A piece
In poetry.