Lyric

One blue sign taken down

Two nail marks in the brick

A square of cleaner wall

Where the cigarettes had lived

The bell above the door

Not found

The counter

Not found

The woman with the paper sleeves

Not found

I came back by the old road

With rain caught in my coat

Looking for a yellow window

And the smell of bread and soap

But the corner had gone quiet

In a way a corner should not be

Like the town had held one finger

To its mouth before seeing me

No fire

No sign

No broken glass

No story anyone wanted to tell

Just a lock changed cleanly

And a window washed of names

Something was missing

But nothing looked torn

The street kept standing

Like it had not been warned

I knew that place by hunger

By coins, by weather, by light

Now there was only a blank wall

Practicing being polite

Mrs. Bell said

“They closed last spring”

Then touched her scarf

As if spring were a person

The postman said

“Maybe before that”

And walked away

With everyone else’s proof

I remembered buying milk there

When my father still drove fast

Remembered you stealing matches

For a birthday cake we never had

I remembered being seventeen

And too poor to leave with grace

We would stand beneath that awning

Like the rain had rented us a place

Some absences arrive softly

Then ruin the whole street

A doorway loses its purpose

A step forgets your feet

No funeral, no warning

Just paper over the light

And suddenly your childhood

Has one less place to hide

Do not turn left at the shop

There is no shop

Do not say “near the bakery”

The bakery is apartments now

Do not wait under the striped shade

The shade was taken down

Do not look for yourself there

He was not informed

I wanted something dramatic

A scorch mark, a crowd, a reason

But loss had learned administration

Forms, keys, paint, a different season

The town did not collapse

It revised one line

And left me standing

In the older version of my mind

So I crossed to the empty frontage

And saw my face in the glass

Not reflected, exactly

More like caught while trying to pass

A stranger’s lamp came on upstairs

Warm, domestic, wrong

I carried the dark of that corner

All the way back to where I belong