Home Sweet Home

I am dizzy and floating and so is home. The door tilts and shifts. My shoes scrape the rug when I walk in. Bright green pocked walls envelop me and I can’t see my relfection in the devil-warding mirrors.

My sneakers hit shoes tumbling from the hallway cabinet. I toe my sneakers off, kick and watch as they fly above the others and hit the back of the cabinet with a thud. I kick a path through the remaining shoes. I don’t bother to put them all away. It’s too messy and I know the wood drawers will push open as soon as I close it. I can’t fit right now. Maybe I’ll just stuff some shoes in, letting the rotten smell leave kisses of scent on my fingers.

I kneel in the hallway and survey my immediate surroundings.

My sister’s shoes. My mom’s. I feel the buttery insoles of her favorite fitflops. I stuff it all in the cabinet. There is no room. My pair of sneakers tumble out. This doesn’t matter. Not now.

I am vibrating.

I am humming.

I’m home I’m home no I’m not I’m not I’m home I’m home I’m a kid I’m at home no I’m not. My bare feet wince at the touch of cold hardwood before brushing by the rug tassles where I leap and dig my toes into the scratchy beige carpet.

I lean down and grasp a ball of lint and dust and hair. I haven’t vacuumed like I’m supposed to.

The table is set. It’s big like this so I run my fingertups across the surface. Dark wood with a bright red table runner. A fancy looking glass bowl sits at the center.

I finger at the woven table placemats like I’m perusing a fabric store, looking for myself in these memories, trying to feel something here like Shop Now at XXXX ST House 50% off Traumatic and Blurry Memories! Actually they’re free. And forced. I suppose my whole life has been forced.

The glass bowl holds fruit—apples, oranges, a pomegranite. When I push it toward it with my pointer and middle finger it doesn’t shatter. It lands with a thud on that scratchy beige carpet.

Oranges and apples roll across the hardwood. I think the floor is tilted. I don’t bother to pick anything up.

I grab the top of my seat at the dining table, a refurbished chair with black flecks of old paint still waiting for me to pick and. Wait. That wasn’t my chair was it? I think it wasn’t, fuck. I move to the right spot at this dark wood oval table, next to the head, the door to my front and kitchen behind me. The sturdy chair stubbornly sits—

— I throw the chair down.