Poem: Somewhere I Lived

Somewhere I Lived

By Kaylee Via
​@Kayleavemealone
​QuailBellMagazine.com

Somewhere small at first, room only for the beginnings of a family, anything else billowing out
the windows, flooding the front lawn whatever the color of possibility, ineffable joy, love all
together is.

It never occurred to me that parents could not love each other, not the way mine looked all warm and yellow,
the setting sun, throwing the shape of their shadows against the walls of my
bedroom—still as real as their arms—as they rocked me or read me to sleep.

And then, someone else was born, and we loved him, too. And when our love got too big for that house,
when we were tripping over love in the living room, knocking love into the sink,
squeezing our clothes into drawers stuffed with love, we knew somewhere else would be better.

It wasn’t ever anything swallowed--nothing shoved away in dark closets or under beds with dust bunnies
to be brought or dragged out after the kids had gone to sleep. It was only something no one knew how to say:
that a bigger house meant more space, space that would eventually fill the
in-between between us, that the space wasn’t just one thing; that the space was everything;
that we would grow up and the house would still make sense; would still be ours; but it wouldn’t feel
like home that nowhere would. that it would hurt; that no one would understand just how.

Kaylee Via is 21 year-old college student in Ohio who has been published in Electric Cereal and New Bourgeois. Follow her on Twitter to check out pictures of her cats.

#Unreal #Poetry #KayleeVia #SomewhereILived ​#HauntedHouse #BetweenUs #Shadows
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