Homecoming.

I hadn’t been here for thirty years, came and put up
a new gate, it made the inhabited house look posh.
I had been spotted, didn’t think anyone remembered
me; people came, family I had never met, they were
clones, of the older generation, with new bodies and
young faces. Clean streets, their children played in
A garden of plastic trees and rubber lawn, they wore
Helmets in case of an accident. The new adults talked
about house prices, homeowners now, thought they
were rich and I wondered if the houses knew they had
become investments instead of homes. In my old room
on the attic there was a painting of me when a young
man, looked at it with some disinterest, wasn’t a pretty
back then, nothing has changed, so I must be timeless.