Return to Sender

The ceiling fan wobbles with a rhythmic clack,

spinning the same air it did when I was ten.

The boxes are stacked like a wall at my back,

marking the place where I’ve landed again.

Below the floor, the newsman is droning on

about the market and the wars across the sea.

I stare at the spot where the dresser is gone,

a ghost of a rectangle looking at me.

One glow-in-the-dark star is still holding the blade,

a yellowing scrap of a sky that didn't stay.

I’m thirty years deep in the life that I made,

just to sleep in the room where I threw it away.