Moving On

A “For Rent” sign is my excuse to return.
I’m led through my childhood rooms
where I used to play blind man’s bluff with my sisters.
I once counted forty steps from window to wall,
but it’s thirty now that I’m older and taller.
I’m Gulliver the grownup in a child’s Lilliputian world.
Green paint covers my toddler wall scribbles. 
If only I could scratch that old green coat of paint away.
The aromas from mother’s kitchen now are cooked up only in my memory.
But there’s the dent I made in the radiator when I rode my trike in the house.
I listen, listen hard, but my parent’s scolding no longer echos between the walls.
Is any of this late afternoon dust mine?
Do dead skin cells of my childhood still loiter here?
The real-estate sales pitch ends and all is quiet.
The agent fidgets.  He waits for my yes-or-no.
The rent is too high, at least in spent emotion.
But I knew that to start. I’ve wasted his time. He doesn’t know the truth.
Then he even lowers the monthly rent slightly.
But I must move on.
Someone else will sign the lease and in time also move on.
And another, and another. That’s what rentals are for.
And with each turnover the walls will be repainted
but hopefully not in drab green.

Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. He will soon  have a chapbook published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been published in web and print journals such as Southern Review, Morpo Review, Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain Aroostook Review, and many others. He also has an interest in digital photography and has published many photos.

Samples of his photography can be found on
http://www.pbase.com/bardofbyte.