Homesick, Mena Brazinski

Moonlight coats like clockwork the comforter in the dark

Night doesn’t get any rest here, either, and the ghosts in the hallway take no days off

Homemade bread and circuses on the counter– nothing else to eat

I count the ways I could starve here, not one sense of mine satisfied

Housedresses and canned goods and thin-lipped smiles–

No noise here survives.

The floorboards creak so they don’t commit suicide, and the curtains laugh amongst themselves to pass the time, the sounds of silk. The streetlight shines through the window, stripes and stains the carpet. It hisses and rolls over, showing its pale belly.

Outside, it is still and nothing else. The road’s all salt and pepper, the sky, a salted mound that rolls and rolls down the slope I grew up on and sleeps beneath the snow, reflecting light and dust and other things that make my eyes water.

Sometimes, I think that I could manage it, that I would get by with lanterns and blankets and Zoloft, I tell myself that nothing is insurmountable, that there are worse hills to die on, that the door is still red underneath. But the past is a seductive liar, and I’m a needy fool.

In the summer, I will have forgotten all of this, will have left my trite and melancholy martyrdom behind, and will stay fat and happy and placated, gorging on berries and mint leaves I’ll watch the meadow be painted golden by morning rays of sun, bless the grass that’s tall enough to swim in as crickets sing the fireflies to sleep and every bad thing that has ever happened to me lives in the walls.