Inventory

I still have the key on the ring by the door,

though the lock was changed out in July.

I walked past the building and looked at the floor

where the mail used to settle and lie.

In the window, a bottle of lemon-scented soap

was standing where mine used to stand.

It’s a house for a person, a structure of hope,

built out of the glass and the sand.

But the wall has a patch that is paler and clean,

a rectangle missing the grime.

A map of a memory that can’t quite be seen,

a ghost of my own wasted time.