"Six Month Lease" by Cheyenne Main

I wrote this poem my freshman year, and I hadn't revisited it until this past summer, during a writing workshop I did in New York. When I first wrote it, I was homesick and didn't feel like I belonged at college. Later that year I became friends with the people in my suite and slowly began to call Cottey my home. As a senior now, I think this poem definitely represents "finding joy in the rabbit hole," and looking back, I can't believe I was ever worried at all.

It's a shoebox of a room;

A shut window, a home fit for a fly

A poor woman's tomb

Shipwrecked in an interstice of time

Its bony frame trembles, stretched in skin

Oak wood doors and linoleum floors

Desiccated, a man's hair thinned

No tangible history, or veiled folklore.

A closet stands in the corner

Arms crossed, hooks hanging down

Peering with scorn at the foreigner

Who measures his narrow stance with a frown.

But this place is mine, if only for a while

A new home, a comfortable exile