Ties

I don't regret. But I don't forget.
Those old homes, sandstone,
sink in their bedrock underbellies
under my grown years.

Wherever I am, wherever the sills
collect my dust, I curl and claim
for the moment, but, so.

That rectangle of a childhood home,
stranger, rots. The dirt decades old
in the dandelion shag was dragged in
by someone else. My brother and I
never left our picture under the loose
carpet by the door; we figured it would decay
before another name could blame the floor.
I don't see myself in the blue walls
of a bedroom now labeled a closet, the blue
of a girl in love with the sky. I don't
need its stiff windows. Even the light
can't breathe.

And then there, that nook in a box
with too many beetles, even though
it was mine (no mice called Mom)
I don't need it. I never wrote my name
on the closet door or baked
sugar cookie into the oven bottom.
It's not mine.

Here, my philodendron in the corner, my
Poe on the shelf, my flats near the bed,
I know. When I go, whenever I go, this place
won't hold my name. I won't need it.
I am not tied to shag or picture
windows or certain hills. I would go
to Austria and make it mine. Or a farm
in Kansas. Or a square
in Melbourne. Only windows,
only windows.

--Kari Jackson, 2008