Anna Couani #202 coming home after Chrysogonus #27

there’s a sterility in airports

hospitals shopping malls

places designed to be cleaned easily

hosed down

sterilised probably

and coming home is so different

like a culture shock at first

sitting in the two rooms of clutter

overhung with books

sculptures vases CD’s

old cassettes musical instruments

paintings of mine and others

papers in vertical files

family snapshots, unframed

the staring eyes of the cat in one of them

fake flowers and the two Persian carpets

one over the other

soft like a cat’s nest

file boxes of teaching materials

and literary archive

teacher diaries only nine visible

shelves of digital apparatus

including lots of cables

little drawers with labels

a couple of bicycles

printers computers modem

VHS-DVD combo and an old CRT TV

for viewing video

then there are the precious objects

small things collected over the years

shells a sand crystal

and things I gave my parents

now upcycled