post-grad suburbia

Back on West Elm where my roots lay and secrets await my ceaseless return. Only now I carry four more years in need of a space for accumulated existence to call home. All that has ever been mine; mind, material, memory, rests under this roof. And if roofs could speak she would be silent; filled to the brim, is there space for me to sleep? Up the stairs and to the right. For twenty-one years; I’d go up the stairs and to the right. My room, and, in this house, the heart of me, is where I laid my tossing, crying, dreaming head to sleep. New born to toddler and maturing teen conjured questions about what it means to be while running loose from nightmarish schemes.

And to return on holiday when faces resembled former days and the exchange of foreign words allowed friendships to age. Once illuminated days haze away and for dessert we’d call for a slice of change.

Closed doors, much like the people they hide, held me. But these people, on hinges too, opened to free me. Holding hopes of their own until I, and all of me, return fed to the steps of West Elm.

Tonight the roof and I will whisper; ‘I have no intent to stay’. Day 1