when you wanna go home, where do you wanna go?

the worst thing about growing up is learning
that you can always leave home but you can’t always go back.
the thing about roots is that unless you want to die,
you can't ever pull them out completely.
we are always going to be from somewhere.
we are always going to be from here.

when you move out of your childhood home,
will your mother clean out all your **** and make it
into the home office that she always wanted
or will she keep it like a time-capsule, so preserved that 20 years from now
you will come to the same posters staring down at you?
what dream is she still holding on to?
does she remember, did she give it up for you?

sometimes i think i am the last five things i gave up on,
a mausoleum to my mistakes.
i am bad asking forgiveness.
i don’t really believe in god, but for some reason or another
i write a lot about it him.
maybe it’s always easier to blame someone else.
because if god exists, i think he’s on autopilot.
see, god is good at letting go of things.
i know this because what else could it mean
when his disciples told me to find someone new to pray to?

all i remember of my baptism is white dresses and pinched shoes
and my cries echoed off stuccoed walls of the church.
my father has a rosary hanging on his bedside table,
he always likes to say that you’ve got to
believe in something.

and i know i don’t always make myself easy to love.
i keep saying “i’m sorry” so what does it mean anymore?
if you say something too many times, the meaning starts disappearing.
i guess that’s why i never told you that i love you,
but that feels like an excuse, too.
love called in sick again, i keep telling you that you’ve gotta get better friends.
they only love you when everything’s going wrong.
you can’t love somebody just because they love you.

love is mumbling you feel so good into the side of her neck.
love is promises. love wants to believe you.
she is beautiful like sunday, not friday. she is holy.
she is beautiful like sunday and tuesday and all the days in between,
like three weekends and six day work weeks
like ***** and soda pop
like sleeping in every sunday and staying up every saturday.
she is alternately the wild fire and the burnt shell of the forest,
the calm and the storm, the curse and the cure.
the hell and the highwater.
you want to learn to swim and learn to drown in her.
love is love is love is in love with you
but she wishes she wasn’t.
love is an unfinished symphony,
all the lullabies you’d sing for me, the clank of car keys.
there is no silence in leaving, there is no silence in believing.
there is nothing that feels better than never coming back.
there is nothing that feels worse than never coming back.

i’ve been too many people to call you home.