Page 4 of The Secret to Belonging

Being Away From Here

you don’t care where you go

you don’t know what you’ll study

you just know it won’t be this

and it won’t be with them

sometimes

when the phone rings late at night

in your parents’ room, and you hear

the fear in your mother’s voice

you close your eyes and imagine

the sound of your future college roommate

breathing in the dark, and the light

from the dorm hallway under the crack

between the door and the floor, and

the mini-fridge you’ll share, and the hot pot

where you’ll cook ramen and add an egg

to the water for protein, and listen to music

and make mix tapes for each other, and pull

all-nighters before midterms, and drink

coffee black (you’ll learn to like coffee)

and you cannot wait to graduate

in the epicenter of the earthquake that is your brother’s life, you become prematurely independent. while your parents are running around wedging cupboard doors closed and trying to bolt the house to the foundation, you’re on your own

such is life in a disaster zone

you can hide under the table if you want to, but the house still falls in on itself

(when you live with someone who lies constantly and tells the truth badly you have a choice between calling them out after every sentence or never saying anything because whatever you say will be challenged and you’ll be told to lower your voice and accused of causing a scene and at some point the price of truth becomes less important than the need to survive and eventually it just isn’t worth it so you keep your mouth shut and become invisible)

a koan:

if you design the set for the seventh-grade play but no one in your family comes to see it, did it actually happen?

if you advance to state playing varsity singles but no one in your family is cheering in the stands, did you actually win?

between the calls from the jail

and the drives to the emergency room