The taste of the top bunk I no longer sleep on.

Homesickness tastes like zucchini bread for me
or frozen blondies eaten from a folded chair.
It tastes like summer and the watermelon
my father would slice up in the sink
the same way every time.
He saved the rinds for me because I ate
water melon like pizza-- fearless and
drenched to my elbows. 
My mother says that summer tastes like
fresh basil leaves and having too
many of them to do anything with. 
And I reply that summer tastes like porches.
I'm missing a home that exists somewhere
that no longer has an address. I'm homesick
for top bunks and the sticky heat
that came from sleeping there.
There was a whole period of my life
where the bottom bunk was only
for a brother and sleepover boarders. I have always been
a top bunk child-- the kind to check
to make sure monsters hadn't taken refuge
below-- only to find my grandmother
sleeping there on Christmas eve. She smelled
like cigarettes ash and ginger bread
and I held my breath and breathed into my 
lavender pillows.
I converted the top bunk to storage
when I stopped thinking of my bunk bed
like a caravan to my own kingdom--
And the springs in the mattress slumped
and swallowed me heavy like a peach pit--
Sleep left my all together when I discovered
the folds of my hips and the frozen
blondies that hid themselves there--
I pushed my bed
to the wall in an attempt to stop
falling out of birch trees--
There isn't even a pillow on my top bunk 
waiting for me if I were to drive
there. There isn't a blanket. There
isn't the lingering smell of lavender
and I am the monster who sleep on the
bottom bunk--
The room smells like midnight incense and my father's 
bandages.
My top bunk lies today as a graveyard
for holey sweaters and coffee mugs
that I've grown out of-- stacks of notes
from high school literature classes
I could never part with and stuffed animals
who think of themselves as orphans--
The mother they knew of knit hats,
cinnamon raisin bagels and
wide thighs is buried beneath the
sheets there-- her gravestone is
a slice of zucchini bread where
a pillow should be.