Bounding from the school bus, I’d rush home where my mother waited, wrapped in a spiral of thin smoke. She’d tap the sofa next to her and I’d lie there, my head in her lap, as she counted the mass of freckles on my nose while whispering in my ear that she’d spent the day missing me. I believed her.
Later, when afternoons meant lonely rides home on packed city busses, with house keys on cheap chains, I'd pedal back up 7th Avenue and wait in the park until the sky grew gray and I could peer in the window of my old bedroom; Alone in the dark, I’d close my eyes and wish only for the fall of my own footsteps on the stairs.
In time, I longed for a home made of possessive pronouns, so I sorted my pennies into tidy piles until the day my fingers trembled as I signed my name in thick ink. That night, I unpacked photographs of the people and places from whom I’d become a fugitive, and hung them on the wall, desperate to silence the odor of fresh paint.
Now, years later, with boxes once again stacked around me, future snapshots appear fuzzy and indistinct - blurred like lately taken Polaroids, still struggling to develop. And yet, through the mist I see home: A place where your voice hangs in the air, like dust caught in light, settling on my skin long after you’ve left the room.
