The Homecoming

Something's changed, I don't recall this door. The mat that once read 'welcome'...now gone. Am I lost in the night, or had I forgotten some slight.. had my address been quelled by another time? The new curtains in the bay window seem nice, though..not the deep blue highlighted sash you fell for. And on that foreign floor, a sweet Labrador lies napping. Not the lightning fast hound rescued from the shelter. My key's jingle, so hollow in sound, questions me now.. whether I know left from right, right from wrong.. Two boots waited, under an unfamiliar porchlight, neither I recollect as my own.. every sunset I knew seemed to've gone. I stepped back from a stranger's stair, perhaps deceived by my own eyes.. retracing my tired steps from the long day, to the oak in the yard, was it always that tall? Surely the messages you left would offer a solution from this lunacy, a chance at a door opening, inviting me, lovingly from this nightmarish scene. But they had all disappeared.., save one. Staring hollow eyed into the dimming display's abyss, I read the last will.. your last thought retraced..in taps' mournful horn. The air in my lungs abandoned me, my shoulders suddenly weighing so heavy, in a torn and bloodied uniform. Somehow the night sky was no longer mine to share.. absent your side, shaking my head in my hands.. my God, how could it be? The door and locks changed, the porchlight rearranged, the blue curtains went too, The scratch of toe nail's click clack.. nowhere to be found, even the dog was removed. Turning away from the lawn to the long sidewalk, oblivion my companion, I laughed out loud at the fool and folly and future that lie in store. There's a fine line between truly belonging.., and only being, bitter lesson learned at a strange door.. Finally saddeningly, maddeningly.. it dawned, why everything was tipped on its face. Your last message, echo'd in my broken mind.., 'you've been replaced'.