Driving Home

It took years and four apartment moves
before we decided “to buy;” years before
my husband could start to feel maybe
he could call this place home. Then again, 
he revised that to mean, home not as in this 
region of the country but rather the house 
we signed the mortgage on, this one with a fig 
tree in the yard which, even more ahead of season 
now than last, is pushing out little green bulbs 
of fruit under each cluster of splayed green 
leaves. Though we both left the country  
of our first formation, I still know 
all the street names, a  map carved 
in memory surer than stone. But sometimes 
his sense of home seems more solid than mine:
his sense of family grown both older and more 
burnished through the years, despite the death 
of both parents— whereas mine is chipped 
and cracked in so many places from a history 
of rifts predating my birth, and current ones
that make it difficult to resurface any memory 
without summoning clogs that choke the throat. 
He can conjure streamers of many-colored pressed 
rice petals strung at every window in May, 
the indistinct susurrus of children’s voices 
in the streets. Mostly, though, he remembers
what exactly a sibling or a parent said and
on what occasion of daily life, knighted
with the same quality of kindness.
Perhaps it’s why I’m the one more often
rendered bereft by circumstance; the ruminant, 
easy to collapse in tears. These days, driving
home under the newly lush canopy of leaves
that tints green-gold in late afternoon light, 
my heart constricts. It's a laden barge, 
bearing crates of artifacts from each of my 
previous lives to here, though I couldn't 
possibly do a full inventory anymore.