Home was always there but,
it would have been nice,
to know where the door was
one day to the next. Which side 
of the house was set
to let me in. I was as stubborn
as any other child in what
I expected. Plaster and lath
was levered away and words
could wander from the rooms
they belonged to. The paths
of water pipes were made
plain between crooked
wood ribs. Drywall stacked
like a blank tarot deck waited
for months while jackhammers
cracked the slab. The kitchen
calendar Mom got at church
Christmas Eve rattled
on a nail bent by the weight
of all those crossed out days.
Wherever fire should have been
was often cold. The furnace,
the hearth. Plaster dust folded
into our daily bread. We ate it for years.

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Prompt

Start with an abandoned poem or draft that centers on some aspect of your childhood – the older the better. Look for more recent experiences that echo what you have written and use details from them to flesh out and add layers/dimensions to the what is in your memory.

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Lee Potts is the founder and editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, and elsewhere. Lee is the author of We’ll Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire, 2021).