how easy it is to pack our lives into boxes
a few hours at most. sprawling trinkets
amassed over years, witness to innumerable tears,
crammed onto orderly confinement. shut away.
i peel free polychromatic posters; walls bare
but for thumbtack holes. how many wounds
lie under the thin coat of landlord-white,
mnemonic shadows abandoned —
my own. those of fictive predecessors.
can it ever return to primordial barrenness,
once infested with love?
when hinges creak and plumbing shudders
will it be my poltergeistic haunting
or just overactive imagination?
i would like to think that would be enough.