Zip code that defined a decade: 98201
You’d think I was in Everett the whole ten years but it was only a fraction of that.
Xi is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet and one of 107 acceptable two-letter Scrabble words.
What home means to me: the poetry bookshelf I’ve moved up and down I-5, the familiar alphabetized spines lined up and facing my bed, the titles — “A Hunger,” “Crossing the Water,” “To Disembark,” “Live or Die” — grounding me in every place I’ve ever lived.
Vulnerability is both precursor and consequence of every trauma.
Until the titles became a rosary of words I’d read over and over and over while my husband fucked me.
Sensing I wasn’t really there, he didn’t care.
Recriminations came later — It was as if you weren’t even there.
Questioning that day years later, he was right. I was still outside planting the dahlia bulbs my brother had given me. “Selected Poems.” “Collected Poems.” “The Complete Poems.”
Performance art is how we met in our twenties, Facebook Scrabble is how we reconnected in our thirties.
Once while my husband was fucking me it bothered me I hadn’t read Lucie Brock-Broido’s “The Master Letters” in awhile.
Not thinking, I rolled over and grabbed it off the shelf after he was done and ignored his look of disdain as I cracked the spine. Dear Master —
Marital rape is what I was told when I asked during group one Wednesday night, What is it called when your husband is fucking you and you don’t want to but you do it anyway so he’ll leave you alone?
Later when I told the lawyer about the guns, he told me You just need to get out of this guy’s line of sight and by that he meant You just need to walk away from the house you bought and not expect a dime; what I heard was, You just need to lose a home to save your life.
Kitchen utensils were the first things I had to replace after grabbing all that I could during the four-hour window I was granted. That first year every time I reached for something that wasn’t there, my first thought was always naïve: I swore I had a spatula…
J is the first letter of his first name that I no longer say.
Inside the 440-square-foot home I’ve rented several years now, I never come home to rage-charged air or something of mine smashed to pieces.
Home.
Going and coming back again and again and again.
Finally, I want to.
Every thing in its place and a place for everything, as my stepdad always says.
Dishes left on the table I moved from Oakland to Shoreline to Everett to Seattle.
Clothes piled on the dresser I moved from Oakland to Shoreline to Everett to Seattle.
Be as in “to be” is just a two-letter word but at least the B is worth 3.
And at night, I lie down to sleep next to the poetry bookshelf beside my bed. I left a lot behind but wouldn’t leave that.
Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash
