There’s a hallway in me
I don’t walk anymore.
Peeling wallpaper,
footsteps that don’t echo right.
I think you were there once,
or maybe I placed you there,
like a candle in a burned-out house.

The mind is a liar
with a soft voice.
It tells me we laughed
in that room where the screaming happened.
It paints smiles
over broken teeth.
It places hands on my shoulder
and forgets they used to bruise.

I remember a lullaby
stitched from silence.
I remember warmth,
but maybe it was fever.
Maybe it was blood.
Maybe it was survival
pretending to be love.

Photos rot in the drawer.
I touch the faces like I’m blind,
trying to recognize
which ones were real
and which ones wore me
like a mask.

There are days
when I almost miss it.
Not the pain,
but the clarity of it.
Now it’s just fog,
a theater of soft lies
replaying
with the volume turned low.

I smile sometimes,
but it’s reflex,
like a corpse twitching
as the nerves forget
they’re not alive.