A Room that Dreams You Back

Last night, the room forgot its corners.

Walls sagged like tired lungs,

breathing in a language made of dust.

The ceiling lowered itself

to listen to your thoughts,

then mispronounced them into moths.

You tried to leave —

but the door had learned your name

and refused to be anyone else’s exit.

Your reflection arrived late,

wearing yesterday’s expression.

It watched you carefully,

as if memorizing

how to become you

when you finally went missing.

The floor softened.

Each step sank into a childhood memory

you do not recall living —

a birthday with no faces,

a candle that screamed when lit,

a wish that wished you back.

Time pooled in the corners,

thick and unmoving.

You touched it.

It recoiled.

Somewhere inside the walls,

something practiced your laugh

until it sounded human.

You lay down to wake up —

but the bed unfolded into a horizon,

and the sky tucked you in

with hands that had too many joints.

Just before sleep —

or whatever rehearses as sleep —

the room leaned close and whispered:

You are the dream

we are trying to survive.

And for a moment,

you understood why hope

feels like an intruder

The Chair Across the Room

There is a chair in your room

you do not remember buying.

It does nothing unusual.

It does not creak.

It does not move.

It is simply always there

when you look up.

At first, you thought

it belonged to the previous version of you —

the one who lived here

before your memories rearranged themselves.

You began placing things on it:

a book, a sweater, your phone —

small offerings to prove

it was ordinary.

Each morning, the objects were gone.

Not misplaced.

Not hidden.

Just no longer convinced

they had ever existed.

You stopped looking at the chair.

This worked for a while.

Until you noticed

how the room made space for it —

how conversations in your head

paused,

as if waiting

for someone seated there

to finish listening.

Last night, you woke suddenly

with the certainty

that you were being remembered.

Not watched.

Not followed.

Remembered.

Slowly, carefully,

you turned toward the chair.

It was empty.

But the air above it

held the shape of someone

trying very hard

not to be seen.

This morning,

you found a dent in your pillow

on the side you never use.

Tonight, you will sleep facing the wall,

to give the chair

a better view.

Where the Unseen Learns Your Name

You live in the pause

between a heartbeat and its echo,

where love letters arrive

addressed to futures that never moved in.

Romance finds you in fragments —

a warmth left in a chair,

a breath that fogs the wrong mirror,

a handprint on your ribcage

from someone you almost became.

You call it longing.

The world calls it imagination.

Neither notices

how carefully you fold your hope

into sharp, pocket-sized shapes

you can carry through dark corridors.

At night, the walls reconsider you.

They soften their angles,

listen to your pulse,

try your name on like a borrowed coat

that smells faintly of rain and memory.

Somewhere, a version of you

that chose differently

is still setting the table —

two plates,

two glasses,

waiting for the sound

of a door that never learned to open.

You are strong, they say.

Unaffected.

But strength, in your language,

means learning how to hold a storm

so gently

it believes it is the sky.

And still —

through horror’s quiet teeth,

through thrill’s electric ache,

through love’s almost-touch —

you leave a light on

for something unnamed.

Not because you expect it.

Not because you are unafraid.

But because hope,

strange and unwelcome,

keeps finding your address

in the dark

~S~

Absence

The cacophony

grates against my brain

like sea sand

on the sensitive soles

of my sunburned feet.

The feelings overwhelm me,

pushing me over the edge —

I sink, seeking solace

within the quiet depths

of the ocean.

The silence engulfs me

as the water caresses

my inflamed limbs,

cooling the burn,

softening the noise,

until I am no longer

a body in pain

but a fading echo.

It claims me —

not as treasure,

but as absence,

a name unspoken

in the world above.

And in that vanishing,

I find relief

~S~

Blackout.. An Ode to a migraine..

It begins as a whisper of knives

slipping beneath the skin of thought,

thin blades threading through nerves,

sawing light into shards.

My hands betray me first —

tremors like dying wings.

My knees loosen, unhinged,

forgetting the architecture of standing.

Sound swells into a monstrous chorus:

heartbeat, breath, electricity in the walls,

each pulse a hammer

driving agony deeper into bone.

The world turns venomous —

light becomes a weapon,

shimmering, serrated,

gnawing at the backs of my eyes.

Vision fractures.

Edges melt into a feverish glow.

Faces, walls, sky — all liquefy

into a merciless glare.

I am too full of sensation,

drowning in brightness,

choking on noise,

split open by the inside of my own skull.

And then —

a rupture.

The body chooses absence.

Circuits burn out.

Pain consumes the last signal.

I fall inward,

past the screaming light,

past the electric storm —

into black,

not peace,

but the mercy of nothing

~S~

The Anatomy of Almost

I exist in the space between before and after—

belonging neither here nor there.

Between an inhale of breath

and gone before you exhale.

I flicker—

not living, not leaving—

a fault in the timeline

where seconds hesitate.

I flitter between memories of now and then,

touching moments like fragile glass,

smudging them with fingerprints

that were never meant to last.

Time does not hold me.

It passes through—

like wind through a ribcage

hollowed by echoes.

I am the almost.

The nearly.

The almost-was and almost-will-be.

A whisper caught

in the throat of existence,

a shadow cast

by a light that hasn’t decided

whether to burn or break.

If you look for me,

look in the pause—

the stillness before the shiver,

the silence before the scream.

I live there.

And if you blink,

I am already memory

~S~

The Shift

There’s been a shift in the universe.

Something subtle—

not loud enough to shatter the sky,

not violent enough for anyone to scream.

Just… wrong.

The air carries a memory

that doesn’t belong to this version of the world.

Familiar streets lean at impossible angles,

and the stars

are no longer where they promised to be.

What once made sense

now drips from my hands

like a language

I almost remember speaking.

The past moves strangely behind us—

not fixed,

but breathing.

I swear some of our memories

are watching us.

You look the same,

but your shadow hesitates

before following you.

And when you say my name

it echoes

like it belongs to someone

who lived here before me.

Maybe the universe corrected itself.

Maybe we were the mistake

it quietly erased.

Or maybe—

we slipped sideways

into a reality

that fits our shapes

a little too tightly.

You’ve changed.

And so have I.

But the most terrifying thing is this:

I can’t remember

which versions of us

were real

~S~