The Room With the Blue Light

There was a room I wasn’t supposed to enter.

Second door on the left.

Where the hallway shifted colder,

and the carpet swallowed sound.

They told me she was “resting,”

but the air in there never slept.

The walls were blue,

but not the peaceful kind—

more like

bruises

or

the kind of cold

that keeps your hands in your pockets.

She was dying,

though no one said it then.

I remember:

a paper cup with teeth marks in the rim.

a whisper that might’ve been my name.

the way her skin looked like paper left in the rain.

how someone turned off the TV

but the static stayed.

They let me sit with her once.

Just once.

Said it would be “good for both of us.”

I don’t think it was.

I said something dumb like,

“Hi Grandma,”

and she smiled

like her mouth was learning the shape of it for the first time.

She said nothing.

But her eyes—

Her eyes were

full

of

leaving.

I’ve tried to forget that room.

Tried to wallpaper over it

with grocery lists,

baby giggles,

commutes,

scented candles that smell like places I’ve never been.

But it lives there.

In the breath between blinks.

In the quiet between songs.

In the blue glow of the fridge at 3AM

when I forget what I’m hungry for.

Some memories don’t haunt you with what happened.

They haunt you with

what never got said.

With what kept breathing

after she didn’t.

___

Author’s Note:

This poem comes from the strange place where memory and silence live together. I was young when I sat in that room—too young to understand what was really happening, but just old enough to carry it with me forever. What lingered wasn’t just the loss, but the things left unsaid, the blue glow of a moment I’ve never quite escaped. This is a poem about that kind of memory—the quiet ones that don’t scream but still echo.