The hallway remembers you more faithfully than I do.
Your footsteps haunt the carpet,
shallow graves pressed into its fibers,
indentations that no one else can see,
though I step carefully,
as if I might disturb the outline of your passing.
The air still carries the weight of you—
not scent, not sound,
but something heavier,
a pressure in the ribs,
a ghost pressing its palms against my chest.
Doors breathe your name when they swing,
their hinges sighing like tired lungs,
and mirrors betray me—
they do not return my face,
only the hollow shape of absence,
a shadow wearing my skin.
I speak to the corners of the rooms,
to the shadows that stretch long at dusk.
They listen, but they never answer.
Even my own echo avoids me now,
slipping into cracks in the plaster,
afraid to remind me
of the silence where your voice used to live.
Every photograph mocks me,
your smile frozen in amber light,
while mine trembles unseen.
The glass frames cut like winter—
my fingers press against them
only to find cold,
never warmth.
I wander these rooms as a trespasser,
an intruder in the life we built.
The wallpaper feels strange beneath my hand,
as if the walls themselves recoil,
refusing to remember me
without remembering you first.
I keep waiting to hear the sound of you—
the creak of the stair,
the closing of a door,
the small sigh you left behind when you thought no one noticed.
Instead there is only a quiet
that spreads like water in the dark,
soaking through the floors,
rising higher each night.
I walk this house as though it might vanish
if I look too long at its edges,
as though grief itself has made it fragile,
the bones of it brittle as glass.
And still, I trace the outlines—
walls, doors, frames, shadows—
as if I might draw the shape of you back into being,
as if I might reassemble a life
that dissolved like smoke
while I slept.
