She Does Not Know

She Does Not Know She Is Gone

She wakes to rooms that never answer,

she calls out soft and waits for sound,

but only silence curls around her,

like smoke that clings without a flame,

and still she whispers to the dark.

She walks the halls she once called home,

the windows grey with winter breath,

and though her footsteps make no sound,

she swears she feels the floorboards shake,

as if the house still knows her name.

She reaches out to touch a chair,

her fingers fall through empty air,

but she pretends she felt the wood,

she pretends she heard it creak,

she pretends because she must.

Her memory flickers like a lantern,

glowing soft then burning out,

she tries to hold the living world,

reciting faces she has lost,

but every name drifts out of reach.

She watches strangers fill her rooms,

they never see her standing near,

a fading girl in fragile white,

she mouths the words please see me,

but no one ever turns their head.

She cries without the grace of tears,

for tears belonged to breathing days,

now sorrow has no weight at all,

it floats inside her like a mist,

a pain that never leaves or settles.

Sometimes she sees a photograph,

her own young face behind the glass,

she studies it with quiet awe,

she knows the girl but not her fate,

she knows the eyes but not the moment lost.

She hums a song she used to love,

a melody the house still keeps,

and somewhere in the walls it lingers,

like dust that dances through a beam,

a memory nobody hears.

The truth is sewn into the silence,

but she will never break the seam,

she lives a life that has no morning,

she speaks to those who cannot stay,

and never learns she slipped away.

So on she walks from room to room,

a ghost who dreams of being found,

searching for the warmth she knew,

haunting places she once touched,

never knowing she is gone.