the definition of home

He walks ahead of me
with his old rucksack
and a carton box
he asked from
a store owner
politely.

A couple, giggling in front
of him, stopped laughing
to cross the road, perhaps
afraid of his dirt-filled
skin.

I trace his steps
under the faint moonglow
not to say a shy hello,
but to murmur a silent prayer
that he is off to
a roof where his
family’s love
flows,

until he stops
in an unlit corner of
the almost empty
walkway, tear his precious
box and make his bed
until the next
day.

My heart, a foreigner
on this man’s motherland,
aching to
come back home,
now breaks for him,
living in his country,
but without a house to call
his own.

—

05.29.2019
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via my dearest @landlessvillager

—

For dVerse dVerse Poetics: On Wandering & Observing by anmol(alias HA)

For this Tuesday’s prompt, I would like all of you to wander around for a bit — take an old familiar walk through the sights and smells of your town or city, a remembered journey from when you visited someplace new the last time, a metaphorical stroll through memorized images and pictured memories, a silent observation of one string of thought to its last remnant, et al. and pen down all that you see, feel, touch, know, experience, in its ambit or perhaps its exact opposite. You can think of wandering and observing as an entirely metaphorical construct too.