Home Is Where the Heart Is

*Home poem

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Home is where the heart is

But what if

Your heart has been beat

Out of its own rhythm

Playing only the Blues

Bruised black

Forgotten tempo and groove

Like guitar strings

That can’t be tuned

And strumming them

Reminds you of

Your mother’s agony

High screech, then low sobbing,

Deep bellied moans

Unharmonized tones

Leaves your heart throbbing

Off beat

You hide under thin sheets

You shut your ears

But the sounds of her tears

Enter you anyway

What if the crackling flame

Of comfort and warmth

That fired your chest

Has been extinguished by

Sweating tears in exhaustion

Washing flames away

And leaving only embers that

Glow enough to bring you longing for

What you knew

You sift through

Old photographs

Of faces smiling and

Closeness, together they stood

How you wish they still would

But as you flip the pages

You see shifts

And rifts between bodies

And that the colors have faded

The brilliance has gone away

And you remember that day

That he left

You remember hiding at

The edge of doorways

Gripping hinges with

Back pressed against wall paper

Wilting from the stench in the air

That crept through the cracks

Under doorways,

Letting in light

Into a pitch black room

Trapped in shadows of screams

And cracks and crashes

Vibrations shook the walls around you

As the front door slammed shut

And he was gone, he left

And you heard your mother's breath

Heavy, and few

And you pulled your knees close to you

To catch the waterfalls

Trickling down

From the swells of your eyes

And the running of your nose

You knew what this silence meant

Even if your didn’t want to believe

He really went

That your family

Is not a family anymore

That now its in pieces

And they can’t even decide

Which piece belongs to who

Questioning where to draw the line

How to distinguish,

“What’s yours or mine?”

And when it comes to you its

Every other weekend

Alternating Holidays-

As their belongings were split

Yours doubled

Two beds

Two toothbrushes

Two birthdays

And a heart torn in two

And if home is where the heart is

Then in your home

Walls do not connect

Floors are unstable, unsteady

And You stare at ceilings that let the rain in

As you question, alone

Do Broken homes
make broken hearts?

Or do Broken hearts
make broken homes?