No matter what room i pick in our new apartment i have a slopey ceiling and a wall all in red brick and mortar. My mother and i were looking at houses the summer after my Junior year in highschool, and every house was a fight. I was insistent on staying within an easy commute of my highschool, and she was insistent on not buying some horrid house just so i could be close to my highschool. There was one last house we looked at before we finally looked at rentals, and it was in this odd mid-suburb that’s actually still a part of philadelphia. It was a compromise… wide flat streets with sidewalks tucked inbetween grass on either side, sagging porch roofs extending out from standalone single and double homes that looked grey and sad. I was bitter and disinterested, because it would be nearly impossible for me to get to school from there, but i remember walking up to the third floor and my mother saying it would be wholly mine and seeing how half the walls were brick and i had my own tiny bathroom and how the ceiling sloped at angles from the top of the roof down to the eaves and thinking … “but, i could live here. this could feel like a home.”


Today the realtor walked down the stairs to leave me be and i stood spinning on the top floor at 44th and Walnut streets thinking “i can live here. this can be home.”