Home I take with me
The skeleton gloves in my pocket
Day after Halloween sale
Five dollars warm
I curl my fingers into fists in my sleeves when I leave
My apartment
There’s a notebook tucked into my jeans
Holding the last scraps of my dreams
Better than any framed certificate
Sitting in my desk drawer
I haven’t even taken it from the envelope
Diploma? What for?
Posters sit on the floor
Took me six tries to lock my door
Walls stand empty
My favorite paintings still bubble-wrapped
Seven months down the line
In my spare time I window-shop furniture
Based on what I could carry
In two arms
Up four flights of stairs
Bought
Returned and refund confirmed
Home I left with you two stories
One on the living room rug
The other
My unslept bed
Home I called the apartment I went back to
After winter break
Walked back to drunk
Cold
Or crying
Home I fly to Massachusetts
A state
I’ll never return to
With five minute forecasts
And a nasty case of road rash playing in the street
No shoes on my feet
Home I bus back to
After work
Feet hurt
Job hunting on my commute
Looking out the window
At that call of somewhere
I can never answer to
Home I put in my pocket
With the gum wrappers and the rocks
The pens running low
That way I’ll never lose it
Like I never lost my house key
Until I lived alone
Had no one to call
Auri Masterson is a recent Creative Writing and Psychology graduate from Concordia University who thinks attempting to write a novel is easier than coming up with a bio. In between manuscripts, he tries his hand at poetry and other various forms of writing as well as a few other non-writing hobbies. Or so he claims, evidence has yet to find him without a notebook handy.
Featured image by Dina Badamshina on Unsplash.
