Blogging the Blues

A POEM

What does homesickness taste like?

It tastes like pink cotton candy. You sink your teeth into it,

and experience something sweet and luscious. You savor the

cosmopolitan world around you; that you get to live in right

now. You smile because you have an army of a family far

away that you get to miss.

It gives you a toothache. So you curl your lip to taste

something salty escaping your eyes. You live with it. You

want to throw the candy floss away, but it’s never that easy.

What does homesickness sound like?

It sounds like white noise. Like a booming, hollow gasp that

trickles down into a pin drop. It echoes throughout a

cluttered apartment. It sounds like a phone ringing that never

gets answered. It’s the sound of an idiot foreigner butchering

the word rød, and calling her red friend an ass. It’s the

vibrato of an adult whining like a little girl, to the man she

loves the most.

It’s the hum of a half-minute conversation with pops about

the weather, while 'The Rumour Said Fire' sings a lullaby

in your ear.

What does homesickness look like?

It looks like hackneyed poems...that puff off the page like

jacked-up songs that would make Diane Warren blush.

It struts like slutty leather pants with a gold zipper,

purchased with cash. It's as sticky and scarlet as Dior lip gloss.

It is huddling under the blanket devouring books about a

mormon teen in love with a vampire. It’s the sight of a

refrigerator filled with camembert and brie.

That’s all.

What does homesickness smell like?

It smells like a fatty pork loin dissected by the cunning

fingers of someone who wants to keep kosher.

It's the scent of the sandalwood in your mom’s Hanae Mori

butterfly perfume. It wafts like Betty Crocker red velvet

cupcakes that do the trick. With tahitian vanilla frosting. It

has the essence of aged olive oil from Modena made by an

Italian amore. You can pick up a trail of witch hazel and

alcohol antiseptics slathered on chapped hands, taking a

beating.

What does homesickness feel like?

It feels like Gaultier suspenders worn too tight, so you walk

around unfashionably hunched over. It feels like a

misaligned jaw. Something askew, the toothache moves

south in the body, settling down in the chest. The pain is a

lonesome twister in the cavity where your heart used to beat.

You miss; you bend over laughing, you ache.

A tumbleweed blows through your body. Some days the pain

is a dusty pit in your belly. Every day the pit grows a bit

bigger. And the seed gets taller, strengthened by the blissful

absence of the one person whose should bring water to

your garden. And the fact that your pain is something this

person is okay with, makes the agony you feel that much

harder.

♥

CT