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 “Home is not where you live but where they understand you.” 

– Christian Morgenstern

 

Perhaps, I have seen 

too much of this place & its people 

to feel truly comfortable here.

 

For years, I have known 

the face of the darkness 

that lives within the city limits

 

& stared, unflinchingly, into the pools of its eyes

& perhaps, that is why I have

such a difficult time calling this home – 

 

my tongue is barely even able 

to hold that small word steadily 

in the arena of my mouth

 

when I think about the large rebel flag 

that stands, to this day, like a sentinel

outside the tiny brown house

 

across the street from 

the elementary school where 

I go to play basketball – 

 

                                                                     or the cotton a white stranger

                                                                 quietly placed in my father’s lawn

                                                                   one night while my family slept

                                                                         to remind us of our place

                                                              & encouraging us all, without words,

                                                                          not to dream too brightly –

 

or the manager of the small café downtown

telling my Caucasian friends that

if they did not do something quick & decisive, 

Black people would claim & corrupt 

the very soul of the country –

 

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all of this,

all of these deep blemishes

 

still remind me of my mother 

& how she once told me 

 

never to fall in love 

with something or someone

 

incapable of loving me back.

 

I cannot recall how many years my body 

has remained outside the full caress of this place,

 

but I know it grew weary, ages ago, 

of waiting for the day when this city, 

 

this almost home, could show me that 

its wide heart had finally tired of laboring 

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to mute the percussive music of mine. 

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