The Rooms I Never Lived In

There are rooms I never lived in,

but I can still describe their light.

One had windows that opened onto a garden

I never planted —

a garden where mornings smelled of rain and rosemary,

and someone hummed softly while cutting fruit.

Another was a narrow room under a roof,

where I wrote letters I never sent

and slept beside a window cracked just enough

to let the moon breathe through the curtains.

There was a room by the sea —

white walls, a chipped cup,

the sound of waves entering my sleep.

I was happy there, briefly,

in a life that never happened.

Sometimes I walk through these rooms at night,

doors opening without sound.

The furniture hums with the weight of what might have been.

Dust gathers on moments that were never lived,

but somehow remembered.

Each room has a scent —

cedar, ink, burned sugar, winter air.

Each carries the ghost of a version of me

who once almost existed.

I visit them gently,

not as a trespasser,

but as someone returning home

to houses built entirely of imagination.

And when I leave,

I close the doors behind me,

but not all the way.

Somewhere, in the quiet between breaths,

the rooms remain —

inhabited still

by the echo of who I could have been.