The frosted glass at the top of my bedroom door,
the handles that hold the window closed.
Even though my childhood home is so far behind me,
these things,
these small similarities,
draw me back with ease.

I used to lie in bed, staring out at the open sky,
the treetops and the stars,
wondering what might be out there.
And the sky here just somehow looks the same,
like no other sky ever did,
and I'm eleven again.

There's a sound outside that even matches
the one I used to hear
from the vent in our old bathroom.
You never think these details will ever mean anything,
if they are ever recalled,
but they are the grains that make up snapshots
on films rolls from other lifetimes.

Some of those nights,
I would stare at the light that fell on the edges
of shelves, chairs, handles.
The warm and subtle hues from lamps in other rooms,
where conversations couldn't quite be heard,
that would scrape the tops of books,
roughing up their square profiles,
making me suddenly want to read them.

But I was always tired by the time that light reached me,
and there would always be tomorrow for such things.