now moving in cartons on the floor the radio playing to bare walls picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where paintings were and something reminding us this is like all other moving days finding the dirty ends of someone else s life hair fallen in the sink a peach pit and burned out matches in the corner things not preserved yet never swept away like fragments of disturbing dreams we stumble on all day in ordering our lives we will discard them scrub clean the floorboards of this our home lest refuse from the lives we did not lead become in some strange frightening way our own and we have plans that will not tolerate our fears a year laid out like rooms in a new house the dusty wine glasses rinsed off the vases filled and bookshelves sagging with heavy winter books seeing the room always as it will be we are content to dust and wait we will return here from the dark and silent streets arms full of books and food anxious as we always are in winter and looking for the good life we have made i see myself then tense solemn in high heeled shoes that pinch not basking in the light of goals fulfilled but looking back to now and seeing a lazy sunburned sandaled girl in a bare room full of promise and feeling envious now we plan postponing pushing our lives forward into the future as if when the room contains us and all our treasured junk we will have filled whatever gap it is that makes us wander discontented from ourselves the room will not change a rug or armchair or new coat of paint won t make much difference our eyes are fickle but we remain the same beneath our suntans pale frightened dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time dreaming our dreaming selves i look forward and see myself look back