Portside

Black Woman Selling Her Home in America

By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

After the show, I can reenter my home

and take myself back.

From room to room, I examine my home

              to see if the possible buyers

did not take a piece of shredded

carpet with them, did not pull down a window blind,

and yes, the television is still standing.

But through the box walls, I feel their fingernails

rising out of the corners of my rooms,

              their presence, these strangers, these spies,

these unknown people who have walked

through my home,

have touched my private places in my home,

done this abominable thing of touring

my bedroom, my sleeping place, where at night

I revisit my ancestors

over and over. My bedroom, where I can steal

              away at night and meet

my mother in the other world.

In my country, you do not sell your home.

You do not sell your home to strangers.

You do not move away so others can possess

your possessions. You plant feet

and umbilical cords deep. I have been

                            selling my home for a year now.

I have been selling myself for years now,

and my possible buyers do not seem to see

the house they cannot see.

Sometimes I wish my home was not as black

as me, that the skin

of my aluminum sidings were not gray

              or black like me. After the show,

I come back home, walking like a broken

woman. I walk in fearfully,

letting myself into my own home

in small particles of dust. I walk in like

you walk into a haunted house,

holding onto foot and arm. Sometimes, I can

see their large eyes, these buyers, who

walk in with ugly coats, who come in,

their prying eyes, afraid something may spring

at them when they finally move into my home.

Copyright: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley; used by permission

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, a Liberian civil war survivor, is the author of six volumes of poetry,

including, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, When the Wanderers Come

Home, Where the Road Turns, and her newest publication, “Breaking the Silence: Anthology of

Liberian Poetry,” forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2023. Her poems, short

stories, and memoir pieces have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including

Harvard Review, Transition, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times Magazine, Crab Orchard

Review, among others, and her poetry has been translated into several languages. She is

Professor of English, Creative Writing, and African Literature at Penn State Altoona.