Bailey Sims is a writer and editor from Pittsburgh, PA. She is an adjunct English professor, the Head Copy Editor of The Fourth River literary journal, and she edits novels for self-published authors through her business, Lena Creative Solutions (lenacreativesolutions.com). Bailey is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, where she specializes in fiction and experiments with poetry and nonfiction. Her work has been published in Last Leaves Magazine.
home feels farther away
when the weather turns to autumn
and the air feels like the picture
of my parents, me on their knees
in a pumpkin patch. home feels
farther away when i smell
cinnamon and think of my mother’s
country store candles and remember
how it felt to come home
from school to cubed apples
and the pie dish on the kitchen table.
my mother had a way of making
everything special like that. i didn’t
used to think of my father when i thought
about fall, but now that he’s gone i remember
thanksgiving turkey that wasn’t finished cooking
until late at night and store-bought pie
and the goofy smile he had when i’d
curl my nose at the green beans. home
feels a lot farther away when the home
you always knew isn’t yours anymore.
when we were only kids
we walked the neighborhood streets,
bags on our shoulders, our own mobile
homes we carried between houses,
yelling at each other and listening
to our voices, echoing down the asphalt
and coming back to us, laughing
through the pain. we half belonged in two
places, which feels a lot like belonging
nowhere, but you were my tether
to the earth. home base only existed
by the storm drain in the cul-de-sac,
but home followed wherever my shadow
went. the only things i’ve ever
counted on are change, and you.
The Field Guide Poetry Magazine 