Current Address

Preeta Menon

 

 Every six months

 I text a new address

To my confused parents,

Who cannot comprehend

This constant shapeshifting

To fit alien spaces

 Crowded with residual ghosts

Past and future;

Rooted as they are,

Like ancient banyan trees.

 

 

This poem is about the sense of instability we felt as tenants. We never fully unpacked and there was always this feeling of being in transit. Though it wasn’t every six months, we did have to move quite often. I found this very unsettling and longed for a place of my own.

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From More than a roof