Like an empty socket alone
On a long baseboard, nothing connects
With him anymore. The bundled family
Has tramped away with its suitcases.
In the spots where he hid he finds light.
To him the dust, with nothing to settle on,
Is a dreary rain.
His push-and-pull with the household gods
Is over; his own knocking rattles him.
His squatter’s rights continue but how
To assert them with no one living to gibber at,
No sleeping ear to enter
Or hot brain to poach his eye, the nightmare?
Perhaps, he never existed.
Perhaps, with new residents he will find himself
No longer himself; some unfamiliar dampness
Under a bed will expel him,
A fresh draft blow him deep between floorboards.
He is slowly unfolding, like a crumpled paper
Left in a closet, inanimately with a faint creak.
He needs the children who lived here, who are now
Releasing rolls of streamers from a boatside.
What a mess of tape as the bright wheels unspin
And the boat is tugged out.
In their minds, his rooms, his house, his drizzle of dust
In the cleansing light are cut to ribbons
And sink like ribbons, absorbed by the air.
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