I Do Not Have a Home

                                                         I

I fastened my fists around the hems of my jacket and yanked the black, worn wool wings tighter to the sides of my body, my chin tucked tightly against the barrel of my throat, my nose a flushed shade, my complexion whitened, as I looked side to side to attempt to clear the traffic with my presence alone, just trying to find my way through the evening without succumbing to ultimate darkness that has allured me so well tonight. There’s a slight dampness to the dark air around me. There is no other frosted air to bite the clarity, no other voices to fill the void, no other excuse to avert my thoughts from the suffering and agony anymore. I am forced to think aloud in my own mind, the silence around me deafening as well as the shouting within the walls of my mind. I flash back to the image of your smile, but as quickly as that image came, it flew, and incoming is the sight of your dismal grimace that I had grown accustomed to in the reflection. You never blamed me for why you became so cold. I guess I always truly knew. I do not know where I am. I continuously dragged each foot after the other, not once looking up from my path to watch where I was headed, not particularly interested in finding a real landmark, afraid to mistake any single destination for safety. For comfort. For home. I do not have one. I have been reminded numerous times of my mother, the shadow of my father, and my siblings that obviously care about me, but each time, the coldness grew deeper and my countenance tighter. I do not have a home. They do not know where I am. I checked my phone. 12:43 am. 0 missed calls. 0 missed texts. I do not know what it was that provoked it this time, but it was the desperation for deliverance that brought me here. The ability to move without thought has carried me through this life in such a way that baffles me. I do not know how I got to where I am, but the San Francisco Bridge is only a few miles north, and I thank my subconscious for not bringing me there instead. Today is not that day.

As I continue my wanderlust journey, I stumble upon a park I have never seen before, in a light somewhat different than that of the scene of the walk behind me. I see a swing-set slowly swaying, glimmering under pole vaulted lights from the damp dew that accumulates on everything the winter air touches. I approach silently, the ghost of a pure smile creeping onto the corners of my mouth, startling me at most. How long has it been? Days? Weeks? I try not to think too hard about it, and smooth the crinkles from my forehead and begin to twist my body with the linked, rusty chain in my hand, spinning to fall with less than grace into the tight fitted seat of the swing. As I begin to sway, my thoughts come to a close; the higher my feet reach, the closer to the skies I feel. The weight �" the horrendous, overbearing, suffocating, terrifying weight that crushes me, for just this moment, is lifted. I take in a deep breath, catching the sting of my raw throat as I swallow down bitter cold to fill my lungs, a new lightness surrounding me with air that has not previously reached the depths of my deepest capacity. I hold within my lungs, chest puffed brazenly, the air as I rocket toward the stars with my backside facing the haze of clouds, my feet crossed and tucked underneath my seat, staring down toward a plummet into a myriad of smooth miniature rocks with my footprints imprinted into them. I release my breath as I plunge. My inhibitions leave my body as the air does. I ease my speed and flow with a natural sway. I swing with no purpose, but with more purpose than any other accomplishment I have executed for as long as I can remember. I do not have a home. But this is as close to the feeling as I’ve reached since I was innocent enough to not have to ponder such a thought. Did I ever have a home? 

I find myself in my old house from my elementary years, running around my own room rearranging my stuffed bears in different patterns and orders, playing dress up in my large vanity mirror, loving every inch of who I was, of everything surrounding me. The smell of last night’s dinner being reheated in the microwave, my dad sipping his wine. 5:24 pm. I had always wondered where mom was by that time. We ate the left-overs, and left out a single bowl. 7:35 pm. She trampled in through the door with small, singular groceries from Walgreens, dark embedded circles beneath her drooped eyes and ankles shaken by the three inch heels that supported them as she contorts her body far enough to slam the door shut with her elbow, too weak in the legs to trust the strength of her feet to get the task accomplished. I never knew it had a name, exhaustion. She was quite the paradigm, it seems. Thinking back I see myself; is that what I have become? Examining my frail hands in the pale street-post light, I idly rock back and forth in an almost still motion. The dark, chalky rust has come off and into the seams of my palms and contrasts my complexion drastically as I assess the veins that hide beneath the skin, layered over tightened tired muscles that ache from intensely holding me to the swing, tying me closely to the only thing that keeps me off of the forsaken ground, which ties me to everything I so desperately want to leave behind. I do not drag my raggedy converse through the rocks, nor do I attempt, as if keeping myself off the ground will keep me safe from what I run from. I disengage this pensive thinking at once, for fear of immersing so deeply that I cannot see the area engulfing me any longer, and stretch my neck back to lift my gaze to the sky. I see no stars, but I see openness. I see light. I see infinity so close yet so far away that gives me the dim spark that I no longer remember how to respond to anymore. Numbness is unfair, while being so relieving. For so long I have felt nothing, no one, no hope, no life, no love, no happiness, no… anything. Evoked has always been the fear that if I could recognize these elements of human life, it would push me even deeper into my sadness. Dealing with the sensory desensitization the best way I can, I cope. As I gaze upon the slowly moving clouds I count the seconds before one strand of puff replaces another, fixedly gazing at no particular point, but feeling within my mind connections between the sporadic directions of the condensation forming so many miles above my head. I feel close to this swing and close to the clouds. They remind me that nothing ever stops changing. I can recognize no more clouds. A new cycle has come over my head, and I feel at peace. I am one within the universe, not as who I am, but as what I am. The universe holds no one prisoner, but holds everyone all at once. I do not know where I will reside; I do not know what time it is. I do not know who I am. I do not have a home. But maybe to be with the clouds and the hidden stars and the miniature pebbles and the rust accumulating on the creases of my hands and the chill and the bite of the air and the dampness on the back pockets of my jeans from the wet seat that I chose to ignore and my flushed nose and pale, frail hands. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is as close as I need to be. Wherever “home” was before I left is no longer a place that I want to go back to. I do not want to leave. I drift within the twists of my own mind.

I check my phone eventually. 4:24 am. What even is a home?

                                                       II

Five. He’s been gone for five years, seven months, and twenty-two days. I remember the moment in which he was declared at rest, no longer emitting jagged breath, no longer exhaling a cluster of slurred words that could not be deciphered, no longer swishing confusion along the sides of his psyche, much like the way he used to swirl his dark wines around the linings of his crystal clear glass. We went home and there was nothing left to desire, and nothing left to hold onto. I had been sitting upright, perpendicular to the length of my bed. I sat and stared at my hands in my lap, sitting still while at the same time shaking in a vibrating manner, not being able to contain the prevalent, raging, rampant stream of fears and pains and demons running through my mind screaming at me, “this is real, this is the life you have been granted, and this is happening toyou.” To lose someone that held your pieces together, to lose him who adhered each and every experience that affected you to form who you had become, to lose that which kept you from not only crossing the line but quite literally jumping over the edge into insanity and discomfort and a mere existence of bits that may have resembled a whole entity but would only then be individual lost souls within themselves. It is something that cannot be fixed. 

I was not merely broken, nor shattered; I had truly been severed by the knife of fate up my spine and back down my front side �" two halves of an entire being, neither of them completed any longer. Why didn’t he just hold on a little longer? I escaped the confinements of my room and made no move to look at anybody. Those surrounding me, just my immediate family members, awaited my response to the situation, looked for a sign of damage, of remorse, waiting for the first sign of opportunity to come forth and touch me with a sympathetic hand; I made no sudden movements or expressions. My lifeless, sultry face let them know I was not truly there to receive their uneasy comforting nor their pity, for my soul they yearned to reach for had left as soon as that of my father did. I did not want sympathy. I did not want anyone else pretending to know what I was feeling, because in that instant I discerned that remorse and heartbreak are universal, but those words are broad and nobody feels them the same way as another. Nobody feels the loss of the connection my father and I had, nor will they ever. No… I do not want sympathy. Fake, shallow sympathy, solely given for the purpose of filling the gaps between the sorrows to make up for the lack of ability to understand each other’s emotions or how to fix them. Humans never did settle well with the fact that not everything can be fixed.