Retrodevelopment

When you shrink to make space for people who don't want to be there,
you're left with a lot
of vacancy. The rooms of your house are white
from wall-to-wall, they're dust-free,
void of skin cells on the carpet under the couch,
void of carpet, void of couch.

When you shrink to make space for people who have left,
you have an abundance
of yourself to give. The chambers of your gun (or heart or home)
lie empty or completely pounding trembling full,
bursting, threats. When you disappear,
when we disappear into the walls
into the space between floorboards
into the space underneath them
for people who are constantly leaving
who falsely promise in the way they smile like they mean well,
promises in their youthful happy goodness, their faith
their faith their
faith

that will save you.
They promise to save you, in smiles,
the quick north-south glance already already flutter of eyelashes
there
their face, where beauty is happening where God
in all his glory gave
there
their smirks play, promise pause stop
for you, they claim, they say
perhaps.
You take steps back, steps plural, steps
to show them where they are welcome

but the wanderers will never stay,
wading into your life just as quickly as they scutter away
scattered, or else crumpled together, forced
into cohesion with the self, where
they breathe the suffocating oxygen of someone else
entirely different but exactly faultlessly like you
different suit, different skin,
the cages rattle clashing but the ticking sounds the same.

And then you,
wallpapered newspaper cracks in the pavement you
dust on the doorknob lamps turned low or off or gone
doors left open windows slighted
loosened, you the greying on the fringes of the curtains in the laundry
basket chewed by time or ignorance, forgetfulness
always to be attended to later, next week,
perhaps hopefully

you are a room full of left-behinds.