Poetry - "Home" by Darcy Bartz

Home is where she kept her trinkets, sometimes in boxes,
the place mother's hair went from brown, to black, to grey.
She once hid fathers cigaretts inside the dresser drawer,
staving death with an impotent gesture.

Home is where father learned to quit - or else,
the place where she dug holes, built tree forts,
and read the first book to make her cry.
Home is the place mother watched her brother die.

Home is where she colored Care-Bears and chased grasshoppers,
and took pride in homework on the fridge.
Home is where the breathing machine took up a full corner,
where the wheel chair sat in another.

Home is where she begins anew
putting trust in a family of two
where memory mixes with hope
fresh stems poking from broken ground.

The windows shifted, the doors changed colors.
"We always have each other
except you can't feel your brother."

Home is where she can point to the spot of his last breaths,
where father was the steady rock,
where the same man was a pebble thrown past his purpose
Where father wept.

Where mother couldn't leave, couldn't stay.
The place where meaning is buried in the ground.
Home is why they moved away.

Home is the port where my ship casts off
and the seas from which I have come,
where the waves pass over the spot he lay.

Home is what they search for now:
aged birds able to build a nest
where these walls won't remind them
of their son at rest.