by Hayley Russell
You walk through rooms
as if stepping into old paragraphs,
edges curling,
floorboards breathing cold against your feet,
wallpaper lifting at the seams like peeling time,
colors fading into the bruised yellow
of a memory you never wanted to inherit.
Every chair remembers who once sat in it.
Every door still holds the shape
of how it closed.
Even the light knows your name,
it bends differently
when you look away.
You tell yourself
the past is only a shadow,
but shadows lengthen
when the sun sinks low,
and tonight, the house feels fuller
not darker
as if the walls themselves
are waiting for you to listen.
Still, you move from room to room,
pressing your fingers to hollow spaces,
hoping one might open
the way a photograph sometimes does
into the moment
you’ve been trying
not to remember.