home, again.

what does home mean to you?


your food is scattered throughout the city, west and north and central, a crumb trail dotting your kitchens in a frame on a map. now another, then another, until you have bridged all the corners of your life here, until you can reason every turn, until you discover your own unfolding.

no matter where you are, you will live here. in these homes.


there were warm cookies on your vintage golden counter top. they were thin and tawny and puddled at the edges, as cookies without packages are. flawlessly misshapen and fragile and faintly grainy from too much sugar. lifted from fraying recipe books that love crisco and gluten and lots of eggs and butter in heavy sticks. cumbrous electric mixers. red ruffled aprons. aspiring middleclass cupboards. (they were white; she painted them white.)

and everything just built up around that view without asking, and the mountains are hidden behind hills of treetops and lampposts, and the new roads invite such swift and cursory travels along that fence.

is it tragic?
is it romantic?

yes, we are (home)made from and (home)grown by and (home)bound to our homes. and entrapped and displaced and divided, it’s true. they remember how we lived, to uphold us, to spite us. they call to us from new rooms and carpet and trees that appear inside someone else’s memory, and old floors and walls and windows that never budged.

of course, we are like them.