H.O.M.E.

How dense of me to stutter, trying to enunciate four letters,
yet I write an ocean of words from the emptiness they brought,
unable to grasp the meaning they offered,
unknowing of the feeling cast out from each alphabet.
  
One by one, I knocked on doors, waiting for a smile of belonging,
my hands traced walls to sense the touch of comfort,
searching through endless, somber corridors for a glimpse of love,
my heels eroding, lost and wandering in the middle of this deserted road.

Mourning for a ramshackle house, falling to pieces
lain fallow under a fractured roof, tattooed with cold ink,
numbing the soul, freezing the bones,
starving my growth in drought, withering by the unfelt warmth.

Every footstep aching for soft ground to land,
I fell limp longing for a tender embrace to rest, pleading—
teach me the delicacy of tasting it on my tongue,
take me H.O.M.E.