The Housewife Collector

Limerence Reverie, Act III

I tend to my home. I take care of the kids. I do everything a housewife should do.

I wear what I want, or nothing at all. I eat when I want, or not at all.

It feels like liberation.

There is no one to tend to except two little children and a rescued dog. Still, the weight of making sure they are well rests on my shoulders. I wonder am I well for them?

I feel I am arriving at an end, yet new ideas and situations keep insisting that I continue

Continue speaking, revealing what has lived inside me for so long, repressed.

All my life, I imagined being a housewife. Not only that—working, too—but belonging to a space where I could care for a husband. I don’t have a husband anymore. I don’t know if this is freedom, or simply its disguise. Some days it feels like liberation. Other days, like solitude. Like a quiet void.

I don’t know if that space will ever be occupied again. And that is the truth.

Not knowing is a white canvas.

And still, I ask: if I lean toward freedom, why do I long for someone beside me?

Within the space I inhabit—my sacred temple, my home: I collect. I gather what I find: small treasures I assign value to. To others, they may be nothing. To me, they are everything. Not because they are objects, but because they are symbols, fragments that hold and fill my heart.

I dont belong to anyone

Does that mean I dont fit in?

Half here half there.