Where I Slept

She used the word refresh.

As in: finally going to refresh the room.

I didn't say anything.

She sent the photo after—

window with afternoon in it,

the floor bare,

and on the wall above where my bed was,

a rectangle.

Pale. Still the original color.

Everything around it amber

from twelve years of light

coming through that window,

but that patch—

the paint behind my headboard—

still exactly what it was

when I was nine.

The bed is gone. The desk.

The holes where I put nails in.

Everything refreshed or going.

But the wall kept the shape of where I slept

like a thing that didn't know

it was allowed to change.

She said it's going to be a reading nook.

I said that sounds nice.