Leaving my house for the last time,
I amble down the wooden staircase
whose nighttime creaks used to whisper to me
to be afraid.
I smell the 409 wafting through the air
that couldn’t scrape off the glitter
still stuck to the floor
from the time we thought it would be a good idea
to mix glitter and paper mache.
I pass by the mark on the wall
where the picture of the Hershey kiss
I got to pick out all by myself
stood for so long.
The fractured glass
from when the “Don’t play in the house!” baseball
was played in the house.

We are lumberjacks uprooting a forest-
eradicating tree after tree
leaving still stumps
we are unable to remove.