by Eve Allin
the formation, make up, construction of who i am, of who i could potentially live to be and who i have lived as, leaks back into the folds of brickwork. i am not found am not lost am here am safe. am left left of the sofa is a picture in a frame and i am smiling
it starts with a storm and it will end with a storm
it’s one of the first videos i fall in love with / i fall in love with the songs with the witch who can be good / taught of duality / i fall in love with the yellow brick road / dad plays elton’s song / goodbye yellow brick / road leading up to the house is not paved with gold / first play i act in given a leading role / dressed as the characters from small town america / feel special / know that the stage is something special / know that i was lead by the road leading up to my house /
we’re not in kansas any more
he’s not in Kansas any more hasn’t been back for a while; mum skirts around conversations of him and his school of fifty students, only two classes, two classes of twenty five, kids kicked in together; moves away at seventeen; if he hadn’t would i/eye turned skyward; there’s a storm coming eve it’s been brewing under your goosebumps for a while now; turned skyward and not here without him without Kansas without a storm
a tornado swoops in on a girl in a tumbleweed palace she is swept through her dream into colour she moves from the black and the white and she lives in colour
we’re not in kansas any more
he lives here now lives in me beside me, in my mother when she cradles me, in my sister when she sings / his roots placed on taken soil / soiled land / landed somewhere not mine / mined into the cracks of where you ought to be / i don’t belong here
maybe i always search for home because home is always overseas
over seas and under bridges your journey was escape your land was a vessel
invested in pages stripped from bark you tear down an enviable memento of a world since gone
trying to say something about where you lived / about where i have been housed / about dorothy
i know it’s silly but i imagine it as a dustbowl. dust in the leaves in the haybales dust in your eye on the way to school dust in your sheets in your boots
did you wear boots?
we’re not in kansas any more
wrapped in a battle of ideological armour / im locked on how your muscle cells have accumulated so much knowledge / ledges of windows where you lean / i feel so righteous but i forget your roots dug deep
family party, your sister says something weird about your grandfather, something I didn’t know
I think about how you have been different from him
we call you by your first name because we are equals
I think I did know / I think I tried to not know
we are not in Kansas any more
you are not in Kansas any more
dorothy gives back a heart a soul a brain / you give me words / you give me a place to stand / a place to dig my own roots / though I have been uprooted too many times to count / to stay rooted in you in your story / in that same flat for twenty years / lifted glass lifted eyes up to me as a child there’s a picture I think / dorothy goes home / thrice for home / three generations down from you and I have landed in a place I think we are both happy to be rooted into
we aren’t in Kansas don’t want to go back never been but feel like I could have maybe should have
first time in a while this summer you head back / flown over on a jet plane / see your roots sprouted into a tree / seeds scattered to an eastern wind / given back to the dust
given an essay about a place / a place that looks a lot like your home / that looks a lot like what I think your home looks like feels like smells like / dust in my throat / in my toes / in my lower eyelids
you have let this new place become home
it must become a home
and I think about how you have been different / about what you have taught me
I wedge you inside my coronary artery / resting beside the smell of my mother’s perfume and my lost sense of place
maybe I dreamt this / made this all up / made it make a better story / a more interesting story to tell to know to remember
a century has passed since you lived on a Kansas farm
since you were swept away by your tornado
since you were swept away and I was on the stage and sang a song about the place you sowed your seeds and followed the road up to my house it’s paved with gold this time
it starts with a storm and it will end with a storm
Eve Allin is an English and Theatre Undergraduate at Warwick University. Currently studying and interested in environmental ecologies in relation to body/spiritual ecologies. Occasional blogger, infrequent writer of other things too. https://walkingwithheadphones.wordpress.com/
Something Other 