Let’s end it here, even though so many things happened
before and after. Let’s drop back down into our
brick-walled kitchen in Thief River Falls (sometimes,
I’ve just said Minnesota, but today I’m being precise),
where my mother asks if I want Kix for breakfast, and
when I say yes—giggling because I know what’s coming—
she kicks me lightly a few times with her quilted slipper feet.
I knew the address was 903 N. Knight before I confirmed it,
maybe because I’ve looked it up so many times before, or
(get this!) because I’m now Facebook friends with a
previous girl in the house before I was a girl in the house,
and she once made the trip back, posing with her brother
under the house numbers we all shared. So many things
get layered over and under, it’s hard to tell how much
we really remember, from when. But here’s this:
On Google Maps, just now, I moved the street view
around and around, almost trying to eat it, my house,
with my eyes, as if I could go inside if I just looked
hard enough. We only lived there from 1979 to 1981.
You wouldn’t think it would count as home.
You wouldn’t think so, but it does.

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Today’s (final) Poem a Day Chapbook Challenge prompt was “the end.”