I drove by the house where I used to live
and looked at the red door my mother painted,
bleeding through the blistered, peeling white the new people used.
I stopped the car where I could see the backyard and peeked.
They put plastic chairs on the dead yellow lawn near Dad’s peach tree,
that bent nearly to the ground, weighed down by rotting fruit.
The neighbor said there’s a broken wall upstairs by my room,
where the new people battle.
I stared at the locust tree grown up on its own,
sprawling bigger across the sky,
but its shade didn’t reach me, and from where I was standing,
the sun hurt my eyes.
I got back in the car—to go home.