Return Address

The label has softened where thumbs kept finding it.

Again, the blue bag comes back to the counter.

Again, the road writes its own name over ours.

There is a flat in black ink. There is a postcode. There is the old instruction: if undelivered.

Nobody says home.

The tape lifts at one corner like skin after rain.

Under it, another line. Under that, another.

Again, the woman smooths it down with two fingers.

Again, the parcel waits as if waiting were a town.

The map is not inside. The map is the bruise where the address keeps being read.

By morning the bag will go back out in a van full of small mistakes.

For now it stays.

Blue paper. Brown counter. One hand.

Again.