Where Is My Home?

The clouds scream, yet there is no rain.
A yellow-breasted bird dips to the ground. She plucks something with her tiny beak and then lands her yellow-breast silently upon her young.
The ground parts: thirsty.

I stand in front of my window watching.
Something inside me is throbbing.
It feels like it is my heart. But it is somewhere in my stomach.
I'm standing still in front of my window. Watching.
But I want to run.

My hands want to scratch. But my skin is not itchy.
Not from the outside, at least.
My fingernails are homesick for dirt, for painful release.
But I have been taught to be clean.

The sky cracks.
Birds fly.
The land is still. Patient.

I stand inside my "home".
What is this?
These cold flat tiles don't comfort the contours of my feet.
These walls protect me from something I'm not afraid of.
This roof keeps out what I want to let in.

I stand in front of a thin glass pane.
I stand in front of a thin. glass.    pain.

I have been taught how to live "inside here" but I come from "out there".

We learn to build boxes
and fill them with things
we invented with minds
that have been shaped "inside here"
And while our spirt is still out there
we have tricked ourselves to think that somehow
it has stepped inside a box
made of walls that are rigid
confining
constraining
solid
Yet weak.
And. I cannot breathe.