PERMANENT ADDRESS

by Taonga Leslie

Eventually, going home means going to a place your mother doesn’t
live. In another eventually, your mother won’t live anywhere. You feel
guilty for not moving to the place where she lives now. You think
about it every time you visit her. But you'd have to stand the way the
trophy shelf looks down on you. How rusty and tentative your voice
becomes. One of the shower tiles is broken. It sinks a little deeper
every year. You wonder if there’s water seeping through. You think
someone should call someone to fix it. Meanwhile, the bathroom’s
getting yellower and smaller. This is the mirror where you used to
dance. This is the toilet where you sat the first time you came doing
what you learned at camp. You were terrified. You didn’t know you
had it in you. You got a lot of practice in these rooms. Every night,
here, and in your other bed, you peer through the ceiling to the Other
House. There you are. Finally. Thin and beautiful. The refrigerator
brimming with bright fruit. A kind man crosses the room to you. His
face is blurred. His knuckles graze against the small of your back.
You don’t know where you are or what you’ve come from doing.
Your muscles bulge beneath your shirt. Your face is blurred. The
gentle conversation is inaudible.  No one is disappointed. You can
rest.

Taonga Leslie is a queer, Black poet from Gainesville, Florida. His work explores how imagination sets us free and holds us captive. His work has appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow and Revista Trama Bodoque. His debut illustrated chapbook, A New Road, was published in 2021 via blurb.