This isn't home

It isn't nearly the place

It's got a picket fence surrounding the yard

Boxing in the space.

There's the neighbor's dog,

Barking loudly in quiet night

And chewing on the newspaper

In the early morning light.

Where on that fridge are the magnets

That hold up my sister's drawings?

Our family's life in fragments

By the photos of us smiling.

In the cement steps

Leading to the front door

I can't find the hand prints

We made after it was poured.

This house is so large and foreign,

So unwelcoming and strange

And this new family's cheeriness,

Is filling me with dreadful homesick pains.

I want to go to my real home

But they told me that it won't happen

Because it burned to ashes

With both of my parents trapped in...