Unfamiliar

Where I am now,
late at night at times
long after last locks,

    the floor shifts

such that folded years
are moved to edges
and brimmed over.

It seems then as if
I still move along
a memorized treeline
of missed hints
in unnumbered
darknesses.

Dogs with their teeth;

The world with its miles;

What was pressed by silence
from pathways
through the thick.

The backyard's stars
are the same stars,

no more tamed
by my collar,
my fire,
my furnace:

Nothing devised
could ever hope
to house their reflection.

The floor shakes that way
north of coffee,

and skylines
blur together.

It gets unsafe to move around,
even on your knees.

So I lay down -
spend that same night staring
at the face of what
has always stared back.