Where Home Is 

A staged poem created for Juraj Kojs’ Where Home Is immersive experience. This part of the project was written, staged, and performed by me. Coaching provided by Where Home Is creative team.

Home is where ghosts and shadows

are laid to rest

Born early, and just in time

Born unknowingly, out of wedlock-

The first clue that this life’s journey

Would take twists and turns

Emigrated from the womb, the first

Home, gutted, forgotten, migrated without choice,

A plastic abode, a soul on display, hugged by

Tubes, instead of hands, so many eyes

Watching

Mother’s milk, souring, soured,

In an act of home-ism

An army of strangers, mothers

One by one donated their essence,

Whatever they had to spare

This baby’s lineage, branches ever forming

Leaving only the task of learning how to breathe

Breathe, steadfastly, for home is

where shadows and ghosts are

are laid to rest

Now, a child, somewhere else

never feeling un-foreign

daily reminders that home, is not home,

an outsider, molded inside

kids punch the air from lungs

crowned queen, once, for swinging back

dethroned, always, in favor of their kin or king

father, a ghost, with strings, mother

ever present, but black and clue,

unable to resist being engulfed by

shadows weighing her down

Hold your breath, so many homes

between the first and the last

a chameleon by habit, a migrant by

default

Now an adult, shedding skins

and voices to survive

always fitting in, belonging?

I realized that a home could be

chiseling myself free

ghosts and shadows transitioning to

dreams and memories

Zeit ohne Shatten

tiempo sin fantasmas

with time, avail myself, a new identity

a new name, reborn,

home is in me