On Houses and Homes

My partner and I are the only people in our department who do not have a house. I've always wanted a house. A house is a good thing. This is obvious. More poems need to say the obvious. They need to say a house is a good thing.

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My partner's mother had two houses. One of them burned to the ground. It was a weird thing when my partner received the phone call. It felt like one of those things that only happens in the movies. "My house burned down," he said. It wasn't his house. It was his mother's. But still. In a family, a house is a house. It was a good thing that his mother had a spare.

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My family never lived in a house. We lived in a trailer. I remember complaining even back then that we didn't have a house. "Shut up," my mother said, "You have a home. If you have a home, you don't need a house."

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I like when people tell me how much their house costs. It almost feels like we're trading social security numbers. It feel like they're sharing. Maybe they only tell me because they know I don't have a house.

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I like when people invite me into their house. Somehow I feel special.

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Until gay men can get married, it is impossible for them to have a home. They can only have houses.

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People who have houses or homes have almost all the time been nice to me.


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The patriarch of my department tell me that we need to have a house. That's how he says it: "You need a house. Professors need a house. Especially ones who are full-time. Or else everybody expects them to go on a job market. And move somewhere else where they'll buy a house."

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A lot of people in my department tell me they struggle a bit. But they have houses.

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It always seems the nicer the house the less it feels like a home.

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We buy a lot of books, DVDs. Do we not have a house because we buy those things? Or do we buy those things because we don't have a house?

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Houses seem to have less stuff than homes.

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You feel less guilty spilling wine on the couch in a home as opposed to house.

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It's home, sweet home. It's not house, sweet house.

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Houses are more silent than homes.

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Homes contain less ghosts than houses.

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I never know what to say when I enter a nice house. Most people in our departments who have houses say when they enter another house, "What a wonderful house!" That's the etiquette, I guess. It feels like a bad thing to say even though you have to say it. It feels like saying, You have a lot of money. In fact, what else can you really be saying? It's not like you're saying, I like the way you arrange the furniture. You're saying I'm impressed at how much you spent on this house. At the same time, if you're out for dinner with someone who has a house, you can't say, You have a lot of money, coded or not. You have to say you have a nice house when you're walking through the immediate thresh hold: the door to the house. The doors to a house seem less open than a home. But there are always more visitors in a house.

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Houses always contain more parties. Homes more get-togethers.