Asteraceae

Surreptitiously we wandered

scrutinizing the dark halls of the high school 

where it all happened so many rotations of the earth ago

tepidly traversing old haunts

with new art on the walls, 

new trophies in the case,

and pictures of new teachers who 

are younger than I and have been there longer

 than I ever was

in short, not trace of us, 

despite what doubting memory insists

this place was important to me

but I was not important to this place.

*

Packing up the old apartment

and painting over all the old walls,

so someone new can see their own potential here

a bare bedroom everything gone, 

a domicile decanted, washed with white

is it true we all someday stand in emptied houses

slow to espy we shall not leave a mark.

do you remember hunger?
the inevitable dread of the short 8pm weeknight panhandle
every moment we are disappearing a little
a cumulus sashay to swallow the moon
stalks of dandelion husk in the breeze

rolling downhill unimpeded quaking

their very grip on the earth 

under violent threat, would you let go of that plane

leaving the tarmac? The Taliban undo 

in days what the most 

technologically advanced military in human history

took twenty years to contrive

for naught- have made us ghosts, djinns, back again

as if we were never even there.