Dust Where the Pictures Were

The movers left, the last box gone.

Just me and the quiet,

and rectangular ghosts on the wall,

where our pictures used to riot

with color, before the fall.

The floorboards creak, a hollow sound.

My own steps echo back, too loud.

This was a house, just solid ground,

but it was home, in a living cloud

of arguments and laughter found.

Now it's just walls again,

a rental shell, stripped bare.

The memories don't quite remain

without the furniture, the chair

where you always sat, through joy and pain.

It's clean, so clean it almost hurts.

Like a wound after the scab's peeled off.

A hollow ache, no longer asserts

its claim. Just an empty scoff

at all the things that once were yours.