“Place I Belong” by Autumn Moss

I hold my home,  a small turquoise blackbird’s egg, in my palms

A tiny throbbing beak chips away at a hard-hearted exterior

My cupped fingers pillowing plush tissue

I find belonging where there’s a soft bed within which I can be taken by the hand and guided awake to the world each morning, nuzzled into a stable consciousness

Every morning I’m squeezed into the world with the same violence of a birth

Light thrusting into my pupils and the cold beyond my gray flannel quilt roughly gropes at skin prickling like a frosty cactus

I have fast-growing philodendron plants with newborn leaves uncurling for the first time

Plump, perky, fresh, covered with a wax protective layer tacky to the touch

If not given a greenhouse filled with warmth and care, its cells will burst and blacken, with ice crystals and rot

I build mobile plexiglass dwellings so my monstera, succulents, evergreens, and vines can move through the February winters: Sun-kissed, safely

A house as a boyfriend’s battered first-car that collects my troubled mind on a bad night and carries me bridal-style into a bright peach sunset

Newborn rays of sun gently baking my skin and the inside of my closed eyelids

Pulling into the earliest-opening drive through for a hot hazelnut coffee; no milk

My place wraps an arm around my waist and puts a defined jaw over my shoulder

A sunflower blooms in my marrow, protected by layers of muscle and bone