It was a small flat, little girl –
All visitors have been right,
And it has taken you years
To admit that the veranda
Wasn’t half as large as
You thought.
So why are you surprised
By the fact you’re claustrophobic?
Why else weren’t you willing,
The last time you saw this place,
Emptied and sold, to enter
The bathroom?
Instead, you sat on the kitchen floor
With an idea for a poem,
Which would extol those years,
Bricking Eternity up, along
With that gray-red-gray rug
Mother had put under
The skinny fake Christmas tree,
Another thing visitors
Were right about; however,
Quite fortunately, nothing else
They’ve said, seems to be anything
But poor adults' defenses to
The puzzling effect your past
Right-wrong-right ruminations had
On your juvenile conversations
With them.
