Home is the Room

Home is the room my mother uses as a canvas to paint a scene of Adam and Eve in paradise, lions and tigers and elephants and me.

Home is the rooftop of an apartment in the fan where I learn how to smoke cigarette butts from the ashtray while my Dad is in the shower.

Home is where my Barbies sleep.

Home is the quiet dorm where I am in charge of the freshman girls but instead catch my head on fire.

Home is an apartment above a Chianti store and across from a pastry shop when I am 20 and hungry, not for education or knowledge, but for decadence and experience, and also Chianti and pastries.

Home is the second floor with the window that you whistle up to once out of 365 days of waiting for your whistle.

Home is the pyramid of rocks my dad stacked at the top of the mountain where he'd planned to build a home but instead built four foundation posts and a pyramid of rocks.

Home is across the street from the house I've lived in my entire life where my mom moved when I was 15, dragging boxes of stuff in front of and behind her, diagonal, 100 yards, from one front door to another.

Home is the apartment across the hall my Dad moved into while I was at school, as a surprise.

Home is the dark hollow open basement with the fireplace and the view of the horses across the lake and the manual typewriter and the oriental rugs, that my Dad gave me the year he finally stopped moving and I left for college.

Home is the boat my Grandpa kept next to the pier that my Grandma fell off of.

Home is the nursing home my Grandpa thought was a whorehouse where he was the Sheriff in the last few years before he died.

Home is the room that was my room as a child that is my son's room now.