Homeless
By Risa Cohen
A young girl
A cold winter day
Midwinter break
Suddenly
Sheriffs knocking on the door
Giving us an hour to pack up and go
Disbelief
Shock
What to pack?
I take the new coat
(That had been purchased by friends)
I don’t remember
Much else
Homeless
as a reality
As an innocent teenager
Evicted onto the streets
In the cold of winter
Paying for my parents’ lack of finances, lack of skills, lack of mental function
To be homeless
Is to feel unmoored
Security ripped out
Parents that can’t protect me
Mental illness that doesn’t allow them to get help
To be homeless
Is to lose my words
I’m a good writer
Or I used to be
But trauma can render me speechless
Searching for the right imagery
How to convey
What homeless felt like.
And the accompanying poverty
Preceding the homelessness
Are there words
To describe
The excitement
of sometimes
affording a fresh loaf of bread?
sometimes eggs too
But other times
just making do
With no dinner
At all.
And sometimes
Not even toilet paper.
Risa lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children. She works really hard at processing her childhood trauma and tries to give her children a better experience than she had.