Ghosted Margins

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a house made of sticks. 
I stretched a thin blanket over it and pretend it’s all bricks and slate.
Then, when rain comes down too heavily, I wrap myself in a patchy tarp and pretend I’m not shaking.
One might wonder if it wouldn’t be smarter to use it instead of the blanket, but my arms are too weak, and I think it might be too small to begin with.

I’m afraid there’s a gaping hole beneath me. But as I sit on plywood — a makeshift equivalent of warm wooden floors — it’s easier to act as if I don’t hear it growing with each passing day.

Yet still I insist on calling it home. Maybe because it’s all I’ve ever truly known.
I decorate it with wilted plants in cracked pots, crumpled pictures in shaky frames.
I smile when sunlight breaks through, when a flower blooms amid the surrounding rubble.

I’m moving again. Twelfth time in the span of nine years.
I went through rooms, apartments, houses, countryside, towns, cities, countries.
I guess that makes me a nomad — though not entirely by choice.

I’ll bring my dummy of a home with me. Balance the plywood on the edges of the void.
I’ll arrange the sticks neatly. 
Maybe I’ll buy a new blanket.