on home becoming my parents' house

Hello Plume! I hope everything is well with you! I found your poem on the spotlight and I was intrigued on what sort of writer you were and I know now that I was right to click on home becoming my parents' house

Home is somewhere where you come back to in memory
as a thought that gives you that small grin
as you remember it.

Only three lines and they convey so much, this is why I love poetry. Its not meant to be long, its meant to be a story in a few lines. A story that invokes the greatest of human emotion.

The best part for me is

and the tiger swallowtails that call her garden home,

That line is just...wow!

I noticed the sentence kind of folds in on itself. You come back to it, you remember it, and the remembering is the coming back. At first I thought it was a bit redundant but reading it again it made me think about nostalgia as an emotion. You keep circling the same feeling and landing in the same spot and it does land very well.

I would love to see more from you. Please feed me your poems so I can eat well!!

The title really struck me when I saw it in the Green Room, and I knew I had to review your poem!

on home becoming my parents' house

This is something I feel I can relate to. I went to university in 2021 with the intention of one day moving back, but I never did. I now live 200+ miles away from my childhood home, my parents, and my dogs, and even though I love my town and where I live, it hurts when I catch myself telling my partner, 'When should we next visit my parents' house?' and not 'When should we go home?'

I love the opening here:

moments like these are when I

feel most like the small animal I used to be.

The pause after 'I' when you break for the next line makes the speaker physically feel small, like it squeezing itself into a smaller space.

thinking how scraped knees and clumsy injuries

are not as far back in the past

as I would like to think,

This is such a sad nostalgia. So much can happen so fast in our lives, and childhood feels so far away, yet still within our clutches. You display this very well in the poem with the spacing between the lines.

and when I bruise it is yellow and black

like the goldfinches, and the black-eyed susans,

and the tiger swallowtails that call her garden home,

and I am glad to be hurt.

Oh my gosh, what a beautiful stanza. (Goldfinches caught my eye because I just finished the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt <3)

that I have donned a comforting camouflage

to exist in a temporary sanctuary I used to call

my natural habitat.

Ouch... this hurts but is so sadly beautiful. I can feel your longing for childhood and home through the poem, but not in a wholly nostalgic way. It's more in a contemplative way, looking back on who you once were and realising you can only be that person again by pretending.

I loved this so much. I hope you plan on posting some more <3

Hey, hello!

moments like these are when I
feel most like the small animal I used to be.

I really like this opening! "The small animal I used to be" immediately makes me think of childhood without naming it directly, but it also gives the narrator a sense of vulnerability and instinct, as if falling down the stairs reduces them to something frightened and physical. I love that! I think "moments like these are when" is a bit wordy compared to the second line, though. I think that it could be more subtle.

and when I bruise it is yellow and black
like the goldfinches, and the black-eyed susans,
and the tiger swallowtails that call her garden home,
and I am glad to be hurt.

This is so gorgeous! I love how the bruise allows the narrator to blend into the garden, turning an injury into camouflage. I have never considered that as an image before, but it is so fitting for the context. The repeated "and" works well, too, since it reminds me of being out of breath, maybe from running. Though, "that call her garden home" is a little more sentimental than the images around it. Is that intentional? I think the narrative voice has been more accusatory prior to that image, so it left me a little confused.

***

I really like the theme of returning to a childhood home! As I am going to college myself, I know the feeling all too well. I like how you have made the setting feel very specific without giving a conventional description of the house, since that reminds me of the feeling of slowly forgetting things you had not expected to forget.

There were some areas where I felt a little confused by the imagery, though. I’m unsure about "poking myself with kitchen knives in drawers I don't remember," for instance, only because the physical action is a little difficult to picture on a first read. I understand the sense of trying to force the body into a forgotten space, but I do think clarifying the image might make it land more immediately. I do like the move from childhood pain into something more adult and specific, though, but I think it comes and goes rather quickly. I would have loved more focus on that idea throughout! It feels very important for the narrator.

Thanks for sharing this, though! Cheers!

Lipton