I haven’t been home in awhile.
The walls are painted black and
the dog doesn’t recognise me.
The creaking floorboards portend disaster.
Did they always?
I fumble in darkness
through rooms once mapped to mind,
recalling our last embrace:
self-conscious and
cobwebbed in bitterness.
Snow is falling,
the warmth a passing
memory, but the mark on the stove remains
from the time I tried (and failed)
to ignite your world.
Spiders crawl the walls.
A fly in limbo, I am
battered by circumstance,
a breath trapped in the breast,
flung from haloed innocence.
A feeling:
the house doesn’t want me here,
but it’s where I belong.
Maybe I’ll stay awhile.
Maybe I’m already gone.
Art of Almost 
