Terra Firma

It took years to acknowledge I didn't want
to stay. But not in the way you think 

you understand. To do that 
took all of the last gifts I'd been given.

Now my world is the constant re-assemblage
of before and after. What's left over:

a kind of moss I use to pad
the bottom of this terrarium. 

Everything I've ever had to prove
of worth, gnawed through to the core

by river rats that came into the house
at night until they became familiar.