Young Writers Society

Hometown

Always feel like driving north will freeze
the anxiety, the thoughts of money and work and
how will I be me,
and the homesickness.

But when I stop driving I feel
more homesick than before.

The people who bought our old house tore down
the fences we built, hours of
post-hole diggers and unraveled wire.

They filled in the marsh on Starville,
where cattails lined the ditches and
red-winged blackbirds
made their nests

and my sisters and I
hunted tadpoles.

The cafe where my dad ordered poutine for breakfast
is closed now.
Just another empty-eyed facade on the river-front.

The church is still standing, there on
South Water Street,
but our priest has moved on and school attendance
dwindles daily.
Closing soon,
the cracked and barren car park says.

I wanted to come home but
my parents live four states away now
and my grandfather is dead
and my grandmother is depressed and confined
to a wheelchair
and I'm more homesick now than I was
when I left.

Always feel like driving north will freeze
the truth of reality burning inside me,

but I guess I didn't drive far enough.

My parents' old couch is a
sagging, grey Lazyboy from Goodwill
Mine now
And the bookshelf my grandfather built,
one thirty-second of an inch off level--
mine,
and I will remember with laughter
and a shake of my head
how he didn't want anyone to know he'd built it
because of that thirty-second of an inch

The corner table, wooden,
with a matching bench,
a perfect fit for my one-bedroom apartment--
he built that too
and as far as I know it's the perfect fit
to his old level as well
In the old house my mom would sit
at this table in the cramped kitchen that was
tiled in linoleum from the 1970s
and my sisters and I would sit too
when I was home
and eat spaghetti and good sauce while
our mother did her homework

Mine now,
table and bookshelf and couch
and mine the little apartment
and the blue-eyed boy who will sit and eat
and make me laugh

Give me a country rain
so thick and fast
it covers the horizon
in a veil of white
and the world
disappears.

Many waters
cannot quench love
but perhaps the floods
can sweep away
the dust and grime
of a tarnished soul.