No Place to Call Home

Little kid

Squeezed in a narrow gap

Between a hard wall and an ancient sofa

Unobserved

Hidden

In a book

…

Outside the pages

There’s no happy ever after

Only resentment, poverty, and pain

Nowhere she belongs

She’s an underage homeless wanderer

…

Her imagination takes her

To places unknown,

Full of wonder, hope, and dreams

Yet to be discovered worlds

A body filled with a nameless yearning

To belong

…

From youth hostel

To council flat

And finally a mid terrace

A home the bank owns

…

Even here

Sheltered within brick walls

The universe looms vast

Empty of welcome or succour

From these pangs of hunger

She finds no surcease

…

The world huffs

And it puffs

Does its damnedest

to blow her walls down

Somehow, through the raging storm

She holds fast

To a book

To hope

And to dreams

…

Only when she walks away

Owning just the clothes on her back

And breathes the free air

Bare toes wriggling in the dew-damp grass

Does she understand

There is no place to call home

…

That old cliche …

‘Home is where the heart is’

Brings a poignant smile

And a stray tear

All these years

She’s searched in the wrong place

…

Now, she’s an older-aged wanderer

Happy, confident, and content

Wherever she may be

Safe in the arms

Of a soulmate

she never could have found

Without first getting lost

And finding her way home