The Language Before Birth

There is a house

my bones ache to remember,

though I have never

stood beneath its grieving roof.

Its walls are built of silences

that hum in my marrow,

its windows shaped

like the absences love forgot to name.

I’ve never seen its door,

but I’ve heard it

swing open in dreams,

the wind saying my name

like a mother who never got the chance.

I search for it

in the breath between songs,

in the pause before someone leaves,

in the way strangers look away

just when they feel familiar.

It is not a place.

It is the missing rib,

the echo of a language

my soul was fluent in

before I was born.

And still,

I walk the world barefoot,

each step

a prayer

to be taken home.

Somewhere inside me,

a door remains unanswered.

And every time I dream,

I knock.