There is change that is certain.
The earth slowly shifting,
The sky slowly shifting.
Seven billion universes
Rotating around each of us,
Each one of us an axis.
The recurring misalignment,
Collisions, and revisions of
Our orbiting bodies
Shape the illusion of stability
Hanging from our celestial ceiling.
I did not expect to come home
To an empty house,
My family's effects removed
Like the leftovers of an evicted tenant.
I am a stranger here,
In this room where I became a woman.
This room that exalted and imprisoned me
No longer offers solace.
Litter, that upon closer inspection
Reveals a mosaic of my childhood
Is spinning.
The pieces of my past
Are spinning
Out and away,
Gravitating towards a larger body.
The car I drove to a stranger's house
To get ****** instead of going
To dinner with my family
Now belongs to another.
The dresser that kept my underwear
In the top drawer
For twenty years
Discarded and lain in the gutter.
The walls which I painted
The most neon shade of green
In an act of adolescent rebellion
Are now covered over
In rental home white
To attract the widest audience
Of potential tenants.
The floor is slipping out from beneath me,
The ceiling lifting and floating away.
New additions to my orbital debris.
This place,
Disassembled.
Each part
Far more significant than the whole.
This house
Will never again be a home.
If I had stayed,
Would the gravity of my presence
Have been enough to keep it together?
Were any of these parts
Part of my universe in the first place?