It Isn't Home 
Andrea Alterman

There’s light in the window of a house I used to own,
light on a street I once would roam, but now I
stand alone at the window of another house, another
home, in a town I may have to make my own, in a
state I’ve never been, restless, worried beyond reason,

living here without a home, staying where I cannot
go watch the afternoon show through trees rustling
as the sea starts bringing in a breeze, whispering to me,
reminding me of tomorrows coming through this evening’s
wavering light that I cannot sit here and wait for the minutes

to walk me down the road to say hello to faces in windows
of houses my friends once owned, places where we used
to sit or stand for parties that didn’t end, games that started
at 6 pm and ran, like water overrunning itself, until we
were tired and followed streetlights home walking,
waking, taking time to run through the endless stream
of gossip that had us standing on our porches in rain,

while the gutters overflowed onto the sunken edges of our
home's foundations, columns supporting our overhangs
becoming laced with braided rivulets draining into the street
we once called our own, in houses with windows we used to
stand around in a state we never left, a state we called our home,

now we call our own, telling them where we will be calling
home, a number, an address, a section, and we ask them as our own,
if they could put a light in a window of houses they can call
their home, for streets they used to roam, for friends whose parents
won’t be phoning home, I wait at my windows for news far from home.