If I think back, the house
we live in now goes
back to belonging
to someone else. Paint
comes off of the walls
and swirls its color
back to white. Paintings
lose their frames
and lean on the easel,
wet and unfinished.
The bed is unmade, and
all that love is waiting.

If I think back, words
get unsaid, and ink
disappears from the page. 
None of us has ever
tasted sushi, no one
has left the continent, and
there are stories we have
never read together.

Back much farther
and we have no children
and even farther back 
we’re in a clearing
about to fill with oak trees
before we return to the edge
of a lake, before we go back
to crossing oceans from
a place too far back to see.