I Want to Go Home

There is a big chunk

of me that wants to

go home – with no

home to go to, for

the home I want is

the place where

and the people who

understand without

explaining – share

without defining –

receive and give with

no thought of the 

exchange, nothing

weighed in the balance

– and too many of them

are no more and time

has moved on and home

is not home anymore

It is a place in the now

that only resides in my

past – I have become 

a woman of a certain

age who wants to go

to home that no longer

is and I am sad – but

not too sad – for I have

long lived in foreign

countries – in the homes

of others – the perpetual

guest relying upon the

kindness of strangers

for no matter how well

we may know each other

you are not home for me

nor I for you

so maybe that’s what 

heaven is – home – 

where all the guards

come down and all is

well even when not well

because it is home

and that is enough

and more than enough

for now, for always

I hope I’ll recognize

it when I get there

it’s hard and tiring

work to be the perpetual

guest and of late, I do

not do the work well –

insufficiently grateful,

graceful – forgetting for

a time that I am not home

and leaving the mask on

the dresser when I leave

the house only to find

that I forgot when no one

else did and they wonder

who I am, this maskless

woman they do not know

Yes, I want to go home

I used to think it was

enough to be at home

in my own skin – but I 

was wrong – Lord, how 

I miss my own kind –

so different, so same

where we all know the

words to the songs of

our lives together and 

don’t much care if we

sing off-key or on

where we all know the

endings to the stories

before they’re even begun

I miss my people and

I want to go home