Poem: Home Is a Place Where Everyone Calls You Baby

I recently wrote this poem and wanted to share it here, rather than submitting it for publication elsewhere. I hope you enjoy it!

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Angelle Leger

Home Is a Place Where Everyone Calls You Baby

Something soft settles inside of me when I walk into my old drugstore, When I greet old women at a community function, their face powder dusty on my lips As I greet them with cheek kisses, when they say, “How you doing, baby,” The syllables drawn-out, deep with age and heavy with the ghosts of cigarettes, Warm as an electric blanket on my lap as you shiver in a shotgun house, Wind blowing through the spaces around the windows and the cracks around the doors. No one can say “baby” like an old New Orleans woman. Ba-by!

When I was a child, almost any place could be home, Anywhere where my grandmother was. We would be running them streets. Every summer, before the afternoon showers, we’d make groceries, Clean the used bookstores out, I’m telling you. Then the rain would come, And it would be time to put on our matching dusters and settle down, A cup of milky tea in one hand and a book with soft, browning pages in the other. This is one of the things I picture when I think of home: My grandmother laid out, all the way asleep on top of her book and her eyeglasses.

Home is when you walk in anywhere and you are pretty sure you will see someone you know, Someone you went to high school with, maybe, or someone who’s your cousin, Your play cousin, your cousin’s cousin, or someone who used to work with your parents And met you one time when you were a baby, and every time they see you, They say, “Look how big you got!” and tell a story about that one thing you did From a time you can’t remember, but everyone remembers for you. Home is where you are a set of stories often repeated, a reputation, A conglomeration of the people who came before you. You’re so-and-so’s daughter, So-and-so’s granddaughter, so-and-so’s cousin, you know her, yeah!