A PLACE CALLED HOME

Last week I visited my house
Or what used to be mine once

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The elevator was as slow as ever
But today it seemed to be in a hurry
As if to show me
“This was your house,
look what it is now”

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As if to knock the wind out of my lungs
As if to tie my tongue
with the shock of what had become
of the house that was ours once
The elevator wall stared back at me
My face reflected: lines written in Latin and Greek
I did not recognize my own self
Perhaps time had changed everything

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Half a year it has been since we moved away
Our possessions and dreams packed in plastic sheets
I have returned for a short while today
My house – now a stranger – reaches forward to greet
with an air of indifference
that rips through me

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Here was my house; it was not my house

Polished plates of metal bore polished new names
Here was my house; it was never my house
The old pictures of my memory stood wearing new frames

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The new owners had left no stone unturned
To make the house look hideous

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The hoax of lush green grass:
an ugly mask upon the polished granite

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You, the new masters of the house
Have taken it and turned it upside down
You, the new masters of the house
What have you done to my ground?
 

An unsightly wallpaper of butterflies covers
the red fire hydrant: a mechanism for safety
You with all your wisdom and good sense
have hidden it well!

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The potted plants stand neglected and uncared for
Where once I had tended to many such as them
A labour of love

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But perhaps, the saddest of them all:
The jagged shards of glass

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Impaled, where once the pigeons sat
Unwelcoming and violent they sit there
Proclaiming that no more
shall the birds sing here
And frequent with their honeyed throats
Where once I had nurtured
The pigeon’s injured fletching

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The pieces of glass look at me
And pierce through some part of mine –

I do not know
For the shock has dulled the pain

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Congratulations, they told my father back then,
You have been assigned to the Eastern Zone

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But where, I stopped to ask
Is our one real home?

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I have wrestled with the question
Taken it, and turned it inside out
But instead of the answer
The memories hit me: a million
different colours, different canvases
scattered places, flowers in the grasses

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Then it dawns upon me: the supposed truth
Maybe just sometimes, says a voice in my head –
uncertain and feeble
Home is not a place, but people