This is not my home.

 

I’m a hermit crab

carrying my shelter

wherever I scuttle.

Home—

not an edifice

not a walled enclosure,

no roof protects me.

 

This is not my home.

 

An electric pulse propels me,

I’m a crazed windup toy,

a dizzy top,

watching the world

through my distorted prism.

 

I’m the leader of

the lost

and

lonely.

 

This is not my home.

 

I flee my assailants,

I steal,

I lie whenever possible,

truth being a

made up invention

not to be trusted.

 

I speak in languages

no one has ever heard.

I forget most things.

I never look for what

I’ve lost.

 

This is not my home.

 

I adhere to no dogma,

write my own commandments,

then disobey them all.

 

This is not my home.

 

I join radical groups,

defend the oppressed,

invest in projects I know

will fail.

 

I wear many masks.

Every day is Mardi Gras.

 

I instigate rebellions,

make all my objections

conscientious.

 

This is not my home.

 

I relinquish citizenship,

possess a passport to a country

that doesn’t exist.

 

I’m the Queen of Siam.

I’m Jezebel.

You’ll find me

In the Bible and

The Book of the Dead.

 

I defy all traditions,

Spit on my grave.

 

This is not my home.

 

Home is a bench

in a Greyhound depot,

a railway car,

a jail cell,

a bed in a psychiatric hospital.

 

Ragged, hungry,

there are holes in my socks,

my soles are worn,

my soul is worn.

 

I wear a cloak of invisibility,

It never keeps me warm.

 

This is not my home.

 

No boundaries contain me,

I go where I’m not wanted,

wipe my feet on the

the unwelcome mat.

 

I insist the earth is flat.

I walk to its edge

and fall off.

 

This is not my home.

 

I ask myself

Why am I here?

I meditate

on the lack of

an answer.

 

This is not my home.

 

I’m a spy

reporting on

an apathetic god.

 

And if you look

you’ll find

my obituary

written in graffiti

on the decaying walls

of every city.

 

 

Rose Oliver is a retired psychiatric nurse who now has time to devote to indulging her voracious reading appetite. She is a reader turned writer, following Saul Bellows’ intuition that “Writers are readers moved to emulation.” Her works have appeared in online and print journals. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.