738 sunnyside avenue

a stained glass lamp hanging

from a sunken ceiling.

bone white in my memories,

any other color is uncertain.

creaking floors and wooden tables

and flowers stuck on aged walls.

once my mother’s, then my father’s

then mine, living among ghosts

unknown to the living:

a heaviness I loved and hated

with the same suspended breath.

eight years since I have been there,

a grave of everything that was.

eight years that have felt like a lifetime,

but the sliding glass doors are still

smudged with fingerprints,

my footsteps still crunch

the leaves piled by the fence.

a childhood that had to end,

painted over and put in the shed.

impossible to return.

I can’t go back to something

that I never left.