Erin Jin Mei O'Malley is the Co-Founder of Sooth Swarm Journal. She lives in Germany and can be found on the internet at www.explorationsoferin.com.
Homesick
When Trevor shit on the carpet for the third time
last week, my mother cursed
the dog, not the disease.
I lathered the blood-brown stains
into abandonment, and he cried and hid
under my bed as if he were ashamed
of the windows’ merciless glare.
How could she
not see that Trevor would only sit, stay, come
for as long as his hind legs would bear
his slow forgetting. He reminds me of every place
I’ve ever left, how each year believes less
and less in memory.
&
I know the silhouette of a door just before it flies
open. The birth of beak-screech and the howl
of knuckled hinges. Hatchlings crawling into the kitchen
faster than the strike of a fly swatter.
I’ve been homesick since the coda of rain
and rooftop, have learned how to flinch from
my mother. Which volume of shouting peels
wallpaper or startles the ceiling. Given the choice
between fight or flight, I always want the bluest
bruise. Girl who lives in the white jaw of a dog
house and listens without barking.
Wingspan: the softest measure of panic.
But I have windows instead of wings
the way a hornet’s nest is still a home.
Super 8, Evan Goldstein