Home

by Jecelie Claire De La Rosa

You once told me home is wherever the four of us could settle all together. Wherever your mother’s table could rest in between meals.

As long as there is a space, I shall place four porcelain plates. One plate for each side, one for each member.

With those conditions, even this room is on the verge of forgetting its chipped white paint and cracked vintage tiled floor, where a torn worn-out sofa stood,

infested with God knows what crawlers sitting in the heart of the city where the snobbiest, wealthiest, and dumbest of the population can be called your home

but we still went back southwards where your name is written on southern grounds and every day you longed for the four of us to sit together at the dinner table

you said, we are restless, until we were all in the same room

ten years in this house but you called it home for only five

Every day, I watched you count the dust on that fourth plate that we kept in place, you refused to let me wipe it out

perhaps you were afraid of seeing your reflection alone, your face tallying the years you waited

For five years we sit still— unmoved and in the sixth, he came and everything shifted.

I dusted the plate and pulled out a chair I opened my eyes and turned around but you were not there

Like the dust, you flew away drifting in the air never to be seen again. F