Homecoming, 30 April 2022

In my childhood's room where you and I once shared a narrow mattress perched precariously on broken box spring;

(Did we fuck on that mattress? I can't remember anymore.) 

Well, that bed, the one I grew up in, is long gone now;

Likewise, the back breaking, broken box spring.

Instead,

What was once my room in this house now holds:

A few unimportant books, 

My mom's clothes, 

and the too soft, plastic covered mattress she slept on in her rented hospital bed 

in the middle of the living room when she became 

too weak to make it upstairs anymore.

Now it lies on the floor, 

And I, on it

Neath leopard print cotton sheet I once stabbed and slashed in a fit of my own young rage 

(Was I 17? It's such a 17-year- old-me kind of thing to do.)

And instead of you this time, only the cold ghosts of my own past lie pressed beside me,

Skin on skin,

against my 

naked back.