Square Footage

The agent says we need to 'depersonalize,'

which is a nice way of saying 'erase.'

I pick at the tail of a Stegosaurus

stuck to the back of the door since 1998.

It comes off in flakes, leaving a patch

of raw, unvarnished wood.

Behind the bed, the wall is a vibrant blue,

a rectangle of who I used to be

surrounded by the sun-faded gray

of the person I had to become to pay the taxes.