Rejection’s Echo Room

There’s a room in my mind

where every “no” I’ve ever heard

rents a little corner and leaves the furniture.

The door is always half open,

even when I swear I’ve boarded it shut.

Your voice lives there on a loop—

not the words, just the tone,

that careful soft cruelty of “it’s not you.”

(It was always me. That’s the problem.)

﹁﹂

I slam the door in my imagination,

feel the frame shudder,

Picture dust falling from the ceiling like applause.

For a minute, it’s quiet.

Then the handle turns by itself,

hinges whining out your name,

And that old sentence walks back in

Like it still pays the bills here.

﹁﹂

I tell myself I’ve moved on,

bought new furniture, painted the walls yellow,

But my chest still rearranges itself

Every time someone is slow to text back.

I hear you in delays, in dots, in silence.

﹁﹂

Maybe healing is not soundproofing the room,

but opening more doors around it,

filling the house with other voices

until yours is just a distant hallway noise

I no longer mistake

for the whole building collapsing.