If home is where the heart is…

A home only in paper,

driftwood I hanged onto

so I could pretend I belonged

across the border,

pass the driest river,

away from all I knew

and forced to assimilate

so I could strive.

When I first got my ID card

the clerk asked me the names

of those who lived there before me,

only known because of the paper trail left

of their lives;

a household of faceless many,

all inhabiting the same home

in parallel dimensions.

I slept there every full moon,

when the waning sky

was swallowed by darkness

and the gates opened for a brief lapse of time;

its guardian unaware of my arrival

and I unaware of her departures.

It worked because it had to,

but despite the roof above my head,

I could still not call it home;

its crevices still unknown to me

under sunlight.

Ever transient,

I spent many nights

in beds not mine,

a perpetual stranger,

the homesick ghost

longing for a home

that was not there.

I laugh about it now,

but it is in retrospect;

with no means of survival by myself,

couch diving wherever a door would open,

a house for every day of the week,

seemed unlike homelessness to me;

the thought of it far too removed

from my three jobs,

full-time student schedule.

From makeshift beds

to worn out mattresses,

the couch surfing days

to unwelcomed rental spaces,

and years after, finally,

a place to belong

and call home.