Tonight's Poet Corner: Safe Haven

Safe Haven
by Belinda Roddie

Feeling claustrophobic, I decided
to take refuge in the atrium of an old,
Roman villa that I was supposed
to sell, but instead, it seemed that
I was making it entirely my own
safe haven in an imaginary storm.

When I was there, I made myself
the same soup every day - the kind with
chewy noodles and dried out chicken, a broth
that somehow comforted me as I slurped
it down in front of a television that I couldn't
actually turn on - the cords had been cut.

The real estate agency I worked at fired
me, but they could never move me out.
I kept the open sky in glass above my
head, and after the rain stopped, I found
that the sunlight bothered me, too, and so
I stayed in a place where my heart made echoes.