Poem: Go Home

I prayed to God saying
"I don't like where I'm living."
The next morning awoken
by the Police.
"But where am I supposed to go?"
I asked.
"home," the Cop said softly,
not unkindly,
"go home."

That's when the tears started.
It's so easy for someone,
who comes from a home,
to say "go home"
-I've heard it before
many times.

But how do I tell them
I don't have a home?
Never had a home.
Everyone must come
from somewhere.
But that doesn't mean they
have a home.

I havn't had a real home
since I was thirteen years old.
My parents sent me away
from there.
First to the Desert,
then to the Other Side of the Country.
There was no warning.
They said "two weeks of fun."
But they meant
Boarding School,
Punishment for Imagined Crimes,
Confinement,
Loss of all friends and social ties
I'd been building
for thirteen years.

Almost twenty years later:

My Father,
unable to put me in Prison,
still has a restraining order against me.
No home there.

My Mother lives with a man
like my Father.
She cares for him instead of me.
He's my replacement;
since she's had him
I stopped mattering to her.
Not my health,
not my schooling,
not my life.
Before she remarried
she put our house into
legal trust.
She said
"Jane, this house will always be yours.
I want you to know that.
My new marriage changes nothing."
Her new husband battered me
at their wedding
and because she didn't care,
no one else did.
One month after marriage
she sold our house.
No home there.

I sometimes hate
people who have homes,
or those who come from nice ones.
Though that's not fair of me.
They can't help the way they are
any more than I can.

Still...
I wish I had a
Permenant Place
that I could always go.
Somewhere safe
and warm.
With food, too,
and a bathtub.
Somewhere I'd always
be Welcome
and no one would
call me bad names
or hit me.

I probably always will wish this.
And it's a little too late,
for that wish,
to come true.