Where the Walls

The door still knows the weight of my hands,

wood worn soft by years of coming and going,

by palms pressed against the grain

as if touch alone could hold time in place.

The floorboards hum with footsteps

long since faded,

a quiet song of return and departure—

echoes of running, of standing still,

of voices rising like the wind through open windows.

The air here carries dust and memory,

light bending through the glass

the way it always has,

as if the sun, too, remembers

how it once draped itself across the kitchen table,

spilling gold into the morning.

But something shifts—

a hush between the walls,

the gentle ache of spaces left behind.

Because a home is not just walls and wood,

not just doors that creak in the night—

it is the way a place holds you,

the way it folds itself around your absence,

never asking if you will return,

only waiting.

And so, I step inside,

not as a stranger,

but as something that was never truly gone.

The house does not forget.

And neither do I.