Ten days ago I left my marriage and today I am visiting

my parents, which is to say I am only ever visiting now.

Technically, now I am homeless and for a weekend, I will sleep

in a room I refuse to call my childhood bedroom.

Childhood doesn’t feel like a place when you have

ten different addresses in eighteen years. In this yellow room,

my mother has made an altar of my old bibles. She believes

my marriage failed due to a lack of scripture.

She does not understand I was suffocating and here,

still, I am suffocating. I walk my dog and the wind

reminds me to breathe. I inhale musty leaves rain-plastered

and mildewing across the ground while thick, white clouds swirl

in the gray sky. Naked tree limbs sway and we walk in silence.

My dog looks up at me. I always look into her blue eye first,

so icy blue people assume she is half-blind. My dog

is tethered to me because I do not trust her to stay.

We are anxiety-prone, both

prone to running away.