Thumb-sized birthday cake on those white plastic tables

borrowed from Domino’s Pizza boxes.

A feline does laundry in a burgundy apron,

a mother mouse nurses her baby bunny.

15 years enclosed behind the cupboard,

life as it was left.

Left for new homeowners

of the only white house on P Street,

its white light streaming through kitchen windows.

Lived in by three girls, a female household,

a single mother’s “temporary” place,

temporary from kindergarten to college.

And I left it how I remembered it,

no goodbye before it sold.

No sense in seeing the artless walls, it’s dwindling soul,

or my blue smudge-stick eyeliner doodle drawing of a heart

inside the mirrored medicine cabinet

with my name written to the left, 

some life, life as it was left.