Wrong Wall

Two nights at a friend's—the pipe at mine

had gone bad. A repair. Nothing major.

Second night, I reached in the thin line

of dark beside the bathroom. The behavior

of the hand: automatic, certain, gone

to where the switch was six years back—

a different apartment. I'd moved on

from it without a thought. The track

my body kept: not the current place,

not my friend's, but an apartment

I left years ago. The space

beside that bathroom door. The spent

certainty of the hand, palm flat

on bare wall. The switch not there.

I stood a moment in the dark like that—

certain, wrong. The address where

I haven't lived in six years.

I found the actual switch. Went to bed.

Lay there.

The hand right.

The wall wrong.