Unpacked Promises

Boxes stacked like forgotten promises

in the hallway of that first house - wait, was it the second?

The one with the creaky porch swing that sang

under summer storms, or was that the third,

where rain drummed on tin roofs like impatient fingers?

I remember the wallpaper peeling in the kitchen,

flowers blooming into mold, or maybe that’s a story

I told myself later, to make the leaving sting less.

Dad’s voice echoing, “This time it’ll stick,”

but time never did, just unpacked and repacked

our lives into U-Hauls that smelled of gasoline and goodbye.

Snippets cling like burrs on socks from backyard adventures

that tree fort in… Ohio? No, Virginia, with the rope swing

that launched me into orbit, scraping knees on gravel stars.

Or was it the creek behind the duplex in Texas,

where fireflies scripted secrets in the dusk,

and I caught one in a jar, watched it pulse

like a heartbeat I wished I could keep.

But edges blur now, houses bleed into one another:

the blue door becomes green, the neighbor’s dog

with the floppy ear turns into a cat that scratched.

I hang on to the laughter echoing in empty rooms,

Mom’s pancakes on moving day, syrup-sweet lies

that we’d come back someday. We never did.

Interrupt: Was there a attic full of ghosts,

or did I dream that to haunt the quiet nights

in yet another stranger’s bed? Memory whispers,

rewrites the script and makes heroes of the chaos,

softens the sharp corners of uprooted roots.

What stings is the fading: faces of friends

pixelated like old photos, names dissolving

into “that kid with the bike.” What sings

is the resilience, pieced from fragments

a mosaic of almost-homes, honest in their impermanence,

holding me together even as they slip away.

One last box, unlabeled, tucked in my mind’s corner:

the scent of fresh paint over someone else’s history,

promising, always promising, a place to stay.