This House Remembers

By MissT

She was a house with no windows,
sealed shut to hold the peace,
until silence swelled in the walls
and even the wallpaper
began to curl away
from the truth.

The air was sweet once.
He said so.
Said she should be grateful
for the roof.
But roofs can crush,
and locked doors
don’t mean safety.

She swept the soot.
Covered the cracks.
Told herself the creaking
was just age,
not warning.

But rot knows.
Smoke knows.
Even stone
starts to whisper
when you’ve lived too long
pretending there’s no fire.

She didn’t call it out.
She named no names.
She simply opened the door
and let the light in.

And he,
he flinched like something feral.
Because only the guilty
confuse fresh air
with attack.

Now they call her ungrateful.
Dramatic.
A danger to the peace.

But she was only ever
the beam holding up the room,
splintered from weight,
darkened by time,
still standing.

And if she smells of smoke now,
it’s not because she burns.
It’s because
she stayed too long
in someone else’s ruin.

They tell her to rebuild,
as if she hasn’t
been hammering breath
into her ribs for years,
plastering over silences
with poems and patience.

She learned to live
with the creaks and the cold.
Learned to love
even the rooms that locked her in.
But no one noticed
the broken hinge on her voice
until she wrote it.

Now she’s out.
Not burning bridges,
just walking past them
with her head high,
smoke trailing softly
like a goodbye
that doesn’t need to scream.