You Have Left

You have left this house empty

and now words have become noise
at a distance; sounds

echoing from the hills and playgrounds

where others dwell.

Catcalls from yodelling mouths

spiral through muffled empty
clouds.

Colours have leached from the world
and in your old room

the wallpaper still wet from pasting
in the excitement
of your anticipated return

acquiesces

and slowly subsides down the plaster,

bellying out into a depleted curtsy.

Some puffgod deflates

and above,
where there has been 
a vital portal to the vibrant silence

of the night,

the ceiling slides 
shut

on purple clouds –

roof slates clatter 

and cascade
scything
the wounded earth

as they land.