Back Where I Grew Up

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This is not my room! That is not the ceiling

That I used to stare holes through after school. 

This is not my bed but an inflated mattress

Set out in disgust for Kenneth's son, the one

Who can't be anybody but a lazy body melting

In thought, in thought, and thought again. 

This is not the same living room I used to sit in

And get stoned after dinner with little evening puffs. 

This is not the same bathroom I showered in;

The water isn't right, it's too hot then too cold,

The mirror above the sink is old though, but now

When I look through the steam it's like I've been censored. 

This is my kitchen? Then why's the sink not near the door?

Did the refrigerator shake itself of the magnets with my pictures? 

This place has snaked on me, got rid of the nostalgia it had inside

Like some kind of puss from years of untreated infections.

What I grew up around now laid as skin under my feet, shed

And left as a carpet for me to enter on, the celebration of its change. 

I can only look, sitting in strips of light from the blinds

And take in this apartment's new foreign view, its languages.

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