bez – without. dom – home. nik – person.

“Oran,” Cixous says, “ohr ahn. My hometown, the place I grew up in. Phonetically, inside out. Outside hor. Inside (d)ans. I was born inside and out.”

The question of nomad, the one born inside and out. Born inside this skin, I am outside of others. Born into the world outside my body, I am inside place. Inside time. Inside the outside.

Within community, its people inside our mind. Without community, its people inside our mind. Within community, its people outside our mind. Without community, its people outside our mind. Who do you carry? And how do we construct our homes?

You frame my body. The structural supports of my roof. The kitchen of my heart. The basement of this soulspeaker. A few areas full and overflowing: books, computer, paintbrushes, aquariums, clothes, shoes, music, dictionaries, trash, cords, bed, sheets, plants. I will gather the supplies from the space inside you’ve created. A few areas empty, quiet, acoustically sound: bare painted walls, wooden floors soft and cool to walk across. I will shuffle across your land, I will walk along your body. My home will be the shell you create for me.

Of course, the outside. I stick my head out, my paws and arms extend. Claws scrabble at the gravel bed of water, and the green floating plants stand in the way. I struggle over and under them. I stand on my back paws and lift my head up out of the water. Open my nostrils to the heated air above me. And then duck back inside. Up above my head, bits of shrimp float and I will rush up and grab them, gulp them down whole and retch up the bones. A fish darts by, and I will leave it a snack for another day.

Outside the structure, a beast runs circles. First she’s on one side, lashing her tail. She jumps onto hills and runs to the other side. Her paw slaps the window of my home, and then she is gone. I run from side to side, trying to find safety, but the truth is: she’ll never get in. Unless she upsets the whole home, turns it upside down like a hurricane in reverse—the damns burst to suck my insides dry.

Sometimes I come out, venture into the outside, and get scared by imagined dangers. I’ve spoken too much, I’ve told you my self. Will you think me cheap or drab? Will you break my hard surfaces, the framework of my imagined body? Will you take all the insides, all the people I love, all the voices wrapped around me, and speak them dry?

So many places. So many homes. I think back to Bville, Oran, Guayaquil, Invisible Cities. The echoes and memories lurking in overlap.

“When I moved from Oran to Paris, I carried Oran inside. So I was in Ohr Ahn and in Paris too. When I traveled from Paris to New York, I carried Paris inside. So I was in Ohr Ahn and in Paris and in New York too.” Cixous.

Land. This land. How many homes to carry, how they corner me. I stick my head out, and see an old place over new. But the new place cannot be the old, it is layered, multiple, but not the same, not home but a home.

In Spanish, sin is without. Casa is home. Sincasa is my name. House of sin. My clothes, the definition of my nomadic state. I live in the house of sincasa, the struts of people I meet there.

You are my home. I enter inside to dwell, the outside dwells inside. I hold the hints of homes before, I hand them over and become. Life tears, and art stitches. I sew the fabrics of our dome. The tent rises, the tent falls, someday it will be unpacked and rise to dry out the inside again. Within the tent, I hold your body, brush my palms against and find residence. Tomorrow, I will take it down. Today will be inside me. Memory the framing, and not the wrecking ball.

Community outside of me, without community. I walk inside of you. My fingers run the walls, my feet the ceilings, my mouth the air. I listen to the echoes of old-new lands. I ask you where you’ve been. I find a floor and lie down nude on your plank. My head leaves shell into shell within the shell outside the structure. Will you hold me? Will I hold you? Is it possible for the inside to hold the outside?

bez – without. dom – dome. nik – steal.

I steal without the home. I steal within the dome. Above me, an orb, shiny metallic stainreflection. A circumference of sky.