elvis lamp 

i don't remember much from 
the house on frankline street.
the taste of spearmint
in the yard. a mouthful 
of birds. packing up 
all the teeth. a lock of my hair
in my mom's sock drawer.
walking through the emptied house
& thinking, "of all the ghosts
who would wonder 
where we went."
in the attic we left the elvis lamp. 
just his bust. face turned
to the side. i loved elvis 
in the uncomplicated way
that children love sound.
he sang one last time 
just to me. i don't know
if this is a memory
or a haunting or a tall tale.
his porcelain mouth. 
i didn't want to leave the house
or the yard where i planted
my first teeth. i worried about
memories & what they would do there
without me. would they grow wild
as the spearmint bush?
deadly as the crack in the bricks
snaking up the side
of the house? i don't remember
a moving truck or even
a packed box. i woke up one day
& the elvis lamp was not singing.
i was laying on the speckled carpet
of a new house in a new town.
at night, squirrels asked me questions
through the wallpaper.
they said, "where did you leave?
where will you go?"
i fed them sunflower seeds.
i sang "suspicious minds" without any idea
what it meant. sometimes we drove past
the house. a light on
in the attic. the spearmint, still growing,
reaching on to the sidewalk.
i was terrified that maybe
the new family had peeled
the wallpaper from its bones.
that maybe they did not know
how to talk to the space beneath the stairs
like i did. i learned to 
collect homes like songs. this was
just the first departure.