Beyond Sensation

By Kat W

I’ll never get to come home, so I’ll have to make one of myself.

They’ve woven minerals into the cold Connecticut grass, rich in comfort, rounding the body, lightening the burden by increasing the volume. My roots are stunted in the soil, curling in the crust, grasping at the easy remedy and still coming up short.

I’m taking shape in a safety net, but others have made a chrysalis of a brick barracks.

I’m not built to fight battles, not when security comes so easy.

I’ll never make a coffin of a cold metal locker.

I’ll never feel the lightheaded sting of fluorescent lights as if they’re chlorine and filtered sun underwater.

The ear-splitting bells will never drum through the canals until they burst.

The steaming trays of grainy slop will never grate against my tongue, scraping the buds like barnacles from a docked ship.

I’ll never know the stink of sweat, substance, and chemical.

The doorways will never chirp in the mornings, a hollow canary’s call of danger.

But beyond sensation, I know I’ll never live with room to learn.

At the end of the day, the sidewalk won’t melt the soles of my sneakers, and the cheap engine of a car won’t sputter pungent smoke into the parking lot as I twist my key.

I’ll never speed past strip malls, grimy and greasy with dust dried in wet, wind-formed arcs against the cream-colored stucco.

The tropical, brown water beaches contrast the crystalline swimming pools on the shoreline, and the hotel guests dirty their diamonds for a swim.

The sun warms the skin in February, and it’s paradise.

The palm trees feed in the dense earth, choked by styrofoam and sliced by shattered glass.

My peers have been cradled in hammocks, but when they’ve crashed on the rocks, they’ve crashed on torn-down bricks. The trees they’ve climbed have been sawed from beneath them for luxury homes.

They give me no cushion for my mattress here, but catch me in a quilt when I fall.

I am afraid.

Teach me a lesson of significance, allow me adulthood where I can bear it. Don’t shoulder my youth and thrust life upon me when it’s my time to go.

I must hop from bunk to bunk, from safety to self-sufficiency. I’ll never learn to live through the in-between.

They have danger, they have risk, and they have ruin, and I don’t, so when I fall, I won’t know how to stand.

So I’m erecting walls of flesh, chairs stiff like bones, china chilled like blood. I will make a home of myself.

I am not safe. I am not a net or a blanket. My walls cannot withstand bullets like their brick, and so I’ve been torn open, but I won’t be torn apart.

If resolve alone can keep a shelter upright, I will endure. If not, I will collapse.

And when I collapse, I’ll be without a home once more, hosted by another temporary bed, and once more, I’ll be ill-prepared when they let me go.

You have the tools. So fill the cracks with mortar, nail the wood in firm, and make me safe.