homes

I have no home. I'd like to claim my parents' home as mine--I kick Daniel out of the room and the bed that used to be mine like it's all still something I have. I hang a towel in the bathroom. I drink water from the kitchen sink. I read all day on the living room couch. My laundry rolls around in the dryer, but I know this isn't home anymore no matter how much I want it to be.

I'd like to say the apartment was my home, but Josiah and I loaded up my car on Saturday and all that's left in the bedroom is a bed, bookshelves, a desk, etc., all to be moved soon after New Years. So, clearly, I don't live there anymore. The houses I lived in before were not homes. In one I had no space and felt more like a visitor except for those evenings staying up until 3 a.m. with D, sitting on the kitchen shelves and drinking tea. The next house was too big, too full of people and too empty of people. Also my room was cold and that year I got frostbite. At the summer house, I was sleeping on the floor and washing clothes in the bathtub. Enlightening, but not comforting, and it was only for three months.

I've been stretched between buildings since the beginning of the year. My books are in my brothers' rooms, my furniture is rotating and my clothes are mostly in the car trunk at any given time.

Over November and into December, I've become obsessed with houses, a physical manifestation of home because I'm leaving current stand-in homes again. I built a crude doll house for my textiles final and have drafted plans for similar projects--one is sitting on the table in front of me right now. Things are off in the houses: furniture floats, and there isn't enough furniture to start with, a chair, a bed, a floating quilt surrounded by statues.

L. and I drove north today and found a tiny apartment, a postage stamp of an apartment, tucked underneath a heavy blue-green house whose residents are babies, old women, and rescue swimmers. We turned the water off and on, tested the oven. A few hours later, trundling through sun and forts then snow and forest, I had a phone message from the property manager.

"You have no credit, no criminal records and now you have a place to live," she said.

This evening my mom and I found a sturdy wood table at a thrift store. So I have acquired a kitchen table and four chairs. To this I add: four mismatched glasses, three teacups, a tea pot, bookshelves, a desk, a sort of bed, two or three mixing bowls, an inadvertently stolen knife (dull), a tiny rocking chair, a truly ponderous supply of quinoa in mason jars, and perhaps one plate. I think I'll leave my kitchen towels to my roommates, to remember me by.

Domesticity. I don't know if this new apartment will be home or not, but I'm ready for it to be something for a little while. Driving into Astoria was the weirdest feeling, like being sucked up a straw or turned into a dog. I think I just need my tiny cave to hide in. Rent will be paid on time and I'll even shovel snow, but since this is the coast we probably won't have any.