Where I’m From

April 17, 2024

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Today I drove past a home I once knew

Through the dusty cracked windows I see unfamiliar hues

The walls are no longer the layers of my mom’s 

Sunday project

The walls naked with my dad’s curious paintings

I stay too long

I start to imagine

The crayola filled walls in the room under the stairs are

probably covered up in agreeable paper

I should drive away

My room that let me fall in her arms every night through

every age now held someone new 

The carpet stained and soft was probably ripped out

along with the ghost of my mistakes

The mirror I painted in jewels and nail polish spills

now greeted a face I’ll never know 

Why do I stay

Where is the rose bud tree?

I used to live in her branches when my parents

turned a cheek

Where is the green door that didn’t match and drove neighbors mad

I want to walk through it one more time

I want to do pirouettes in the foyer 

I want to trip on the stair that always sneaks ip 

I want to tilt my head at the map that lived above me

I want to get a splinter on the deck older than my parents

I want to lift up a rock and oo and ah at the life beneath 

I want to turn on my record player and try on my mom’s 

high heels

I want

I can’t

I won’t

I will never go back to where I come from

I am where I’m from

fleeting but forever

• Harper Burgy