Home Is Where You Park It

Home Is Where You Park It

A box. A square ugly box.
An ugly box on wheels.
Well, a box with 6 sub-boxes.
Can I live, really live here?

Windows like eggshells
that I am afraid to touch.
Rugs partially installed
like half-assed gift wrap.

Cabinets and appliances
placed as if someone took them inside
and forgot where to put them.

Is there a heart in this thing called a home?
Where the hell is it?
Maybe it fell out of the hole in the floor.
The hole that was left by a now vacant A/C.

Returning hours later,
armed with buckets, mops, brooms and gin.
Gin and tonic in hand, I cautiously begin.
Begin the autopsy in search of its heart.
Throwing away debris and with it dissappointment.
It is what it is, now work with it.

Cabinets as I wipe crumble into shredded wheat.
Out they then go, amputated to save the heart.
After many months it is diagnosed.
Diagnosed and pronounced stable.

Stable and made stronger by many little efforts.
Fortified by the love and encouragement of souls in it.
Infused with a life all it's own now.
Somehow it seems larger with us all here inside.

Derived from the smells of people and their things.
Spices in the kitchen say: "We eat here"
Stories told on shoes in a corner by the contents
of what is on them- grass, sand, paint.
Pictures on walls.Books on shelves.

Bandages and aspirins hint of the effort to heal it.
We live Here. Such as it is,we live here.
And the box is now a home
Having gone from nothing to an extension of self.
Home Is Where You Park It

Kimarie Manhart-Freeman
July 1, 2009