Back Where I Grew Up

This is not my room! That is not the ceiling
That I used to stare holes through after school.

This is not my bed but an inflated mattress
Set out in disgust for Kenneth's son, the one
Who can't be anybody but a lazy body melting
In thought, in thought, and thought again.

This is not the same living room I used to sit in
And get stoned after dinner with little evening puffs.

This is not the same bathroom I showered in;
The water isn't right, it's too hot then too cold,
The mirror above the sink is old though, but now
When I look through the steam it's like I've been censored.

This is my kitchen? Then why's the sink not near the door?
Did the refrigerator shake itself of the magnets with my pictures?

This place has snaked on me, got rid of the nostalgia it had inside
Like some kind of puss from years of untreated infections.
What I grew up around now laid as skin under my feet, shed
And left as a carpet for me to enter on, the celebration of its change.

I can only look, sitting in strips of light from the blinds
And take in this apartment's new foreign view, its languages.