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.