My Childhood Bedroom
a poem
When I was a child I didn’t have a bedroom. My mom and I slept in one room, and ate there as well. Cockroaches fell on our heads in the night, when the light was turned off.
Later, I was still a child, and my dad came home on furlough. I didn’t know where he had been, only that he had to go back again. They said it was the hospital.
I think it might have been somewhere else.
While my dad was there, we moved across the hall. I was still small, and so was our space. I still didn’t have a place or a bed of my own. But now mommy and I did have a bedroom. It was great. I was eight, and I didn’t know we were poor.
Daddy came home again, and we moved upstate. My nana came with us. She and I shared a room. It was big and bright. We also had a kitchen and a living room, and our very own bathroom that we shared with no one but our own family.
I didn’t have a childhood bedroom until I reached my teens. I never knew I was supposed to, and never missed it. My mom kissed me goodnight, every night. My dad came home from wherever he had been; and my nana told me I was beautiful.
© Candace La Rue 2021
Inspired by this poem, that I was tagged in:
Tagging Amanda Dalmas, Dennett, Zara Everly, Madb Tighe, Jupiter Grant
if you’re up to it and anyone else interested in today’s prompt: what was your childhood bedroom like?
