Where I Grew Up

I remember the open road driving into the abyss

Of the hotel district.

Your mother’s rage still echoing in our ears.

Eventually tiring of living on the fringes.

Defeatedly,

Repeatedly,

Crawling back into her lair

Until we tired once again

Of her callousness

And her spite.

And we’d find another place that would tolerate us

So we could sleep off the effects of her venom.

The numbness

After she iced us out

With her cold pale glare once again.

And I remember that birthday

In my snow covered car

After I told you we had made it

After I told you we were home in our very own home.

Until we weren't.

And I remember our condo in Pennsylvania

And your mother’s Duchenne smile when it didn’t work out

And the crassness in her voice

like a cicada in the thick Connecticut heat.

Her clanging, disgusted whisper to your aunt

That we were too obsessed with each other

And I was too tired to continue on.

I remember the open gray sky flying into the abyss.

Plane hovering above the shimmering lights

Of a strange new city.

In a strange man's house

I was able to sleep for a couple of years

While you stayed behind

A door with five dead bolts

In your mother’s house.

Sleeping and eating

With your headset on.

Patiently standing by

Until I sent you a plane ticket

To me.

And we drove to California.

To Colorado.

To Connecticut.

Sleeping in tents.

Sleeping by the ocean and in the forest.

Not sleeping.

Sleeping in the front seat of my car.

Curling up into a ball on your lap

My gate slowly rising

Marinating in your energy

Healing me once again.

And the hotels eventually beckoned us full time again.

After a three week hibernation

Under the heavy communal comforter

Blurry eyed

I’d put a pile of paper in front of a faceless employee

And beg her with my eyes to let us stay

A little longer

At the only place we ever felt home.

Among the chaos and the stained carpets

And the styrofoam cups with bottomless coffee

The truckers

And the strangers

And their strange voices

And their strange conversations

Their scent on our sheets

Where we planted the seeds;

Alongside moldy showers

With the conflicted, disordered energies

And the dehydrated single serving soaps;

Only to find them torn out at the roots

Time and time again.

As a million strangers from everywhere

And nowhere

Trampled on our soil

E v e r y t i m e

We’d try to till it.

Our garden never bore any fruit

And eventually I tired of trying.

And you’re in California

And I’m back in the desert.

Rarely when we aren’t busy surviving

And we can make time for each other

The only thing that holds constant

In the ever changing backdrop of our meetings;

Under the oppressive sun

in a McDonald’s parking lot

in Temecula.

On the worn leather seats

of my old Porsche

in SLO.

Inside a musty 1950’s

Marilyn Monroe adorned AirBnB;

Is you.

And in the times where my mind is racing

Through the abyss

And I don’t feel connected to my environment

And I don’t feel at home

I just think about you

And I remember where I'm from

Where I grew up

My childhood home

Is you.