South 190th Street, Omaha
Do you remember the way we grew up? You,
somewhere in Washington, me somewhere else in Arizona. Both
knowing youth rooms where freshly-scrubbed seminary grads
with guitar straps like Joseph’s coat of many colors; and
sanctuaries, where middle-aged pastors keeping safe distance
behind the altar and the cross;
told us in tones like cornerstones:
The church is not a building, but the people.
I know now they both were and were not full of holy shit.
Because home is movable and you are the proof.
Wherever you send me a secret smile or wink the wink
to wreck a thousand ships. Wherever you sigh out my name
or laugh into my neck. Wherever you play the songs that raise your
thumbs or hush me with your gaze. Here, I relax into myself, into the
safety we only ever miss after birth.
And yet here I sit at your dining-room table, your cat
mewing to enter in; one finished puzzle and one unfinished puzzle
stretching the mahogany like folk art; pictures of you and your
children looking upon me with expressions I’ve come to adore.
An invisible blanket wraps me, here across the room
from where I shed your blanket and rose into the day.
Let us stop preaching of what is not and what is but and assent
to the mystery, my love. Home is a person, place or thing;
wherever your spirit resides and says it recognizes me.
About the Author: Aarik Danielsen is a writer and longtime journalist who splits his time between Nebraska and Missouri. His debut essay collection will arrive in 2027 via Cornerstone Press. His work is forthcoming or appears in Pleiades, Tupelo Quarterly, Image Journal and more.
Image Credit: John Vachon “Houses in Italian district, Omaha, Nebraska” Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 