Home Over the Years

In the blazing sun, sometimes my world looked like leather.

Sewn together, my sandals protected me from the dirt’s teeth.

I walked in a field that reminded me of the equator’s stretching heat.

The whispering mountains and lands of green stomachs protected a pueblo I carried our bones from.

Home stretched from the rivers as washing machines.

It was dye from the sea.

My world had been the electric dying in a middle class house.

It was the pang of uncertainty, of spilling checks and empty jars for future trips.

The walls of a living room became the currency exchange and a baby crying. It was the large black eyes of a child looking at their future in the pamphlets.

My world was then jealousy.

In a college dorm, I became my own mother and father.

I was a doting sister, and a teasing brother.

I pictured home to be like the study rooms full of loud silence.

When I saw laughter coming out of the stores on Michigan avenue, I wondered when the tarot cards on my desk would bring me the same luck.

My home twisted itself into confusion.

It was anger.

The crowd of my graduation was a man made bloodline.

On the way out of my studies, music wrapped me out of cracked speakers in silver cars with broken mirrors.

The notes tried to congratulate my black hair on being a Mexican woman in STEM.

In the end, gentrified happiness on media washed away my footsteps.

Home is omniscient.

Where I go it will always be.

I tried to look for it in men, those who smiled when I told them I love watching the lake sparkle on Friday nights.

When I gave someone a body, I thought home was imminent.

But when they always left, I stared at home in the dripping mirror.

Home became my windowsill.

When orange butterflies with spotted wings flew past me, I read about the sun.

As twitching candle flames danced, I created my foundation.

Even if I was my only home, I was my own comfort.

It was a house built to last lifetimes.