Trista Hurley-Waxali wrote this poem in response to the prompt “Home of child goddess unshaken.”
Response to Home of child goddess unshaken
When i imagine the four walls full
of memories, I think of the various hotel
rooms that I’ve stayed at.
No where exotic comes to mine, really just all of them.
Some would be local to where I’m living or want to live, the cliche, near
and far, expensive and cheap.
Where my memory feels like a strung together set
of room charges.
Where the sense of being anonymous for even
a weekend becomes addicting.
When the rest of week I work hard to
hide away from my past.
I would steal the hotel pens as a reminder
of my journey home. Where now each one rests in my
pencil case on my desk. I use them as I note escape routes
and throw them out when they run dry.
Like the fear held in the one time prison in
my past. The very room that I actively enter and redo to make space
to hold new memories.
These rooms are starting again starting to feel like home.
Somewhere between the duvet and the 24 hour room service.
Maybe it’s when I started booking them under
my name with a joint credit card. A card that has the funds to
payout the $9 M&M’s and the half bottle of champagne.
dis•articulations 2015 