House

She closed her eyes and squeezed her knees to her chest like if she made herself smaller maybe the world would feel less heavy pressing against her ribs. The room was loud with silence, the kind that hums in your ears and reminds you of every word you never said out loud. She wondered if people could see the cracks in her the way she felt them spreading, thin lines like glass about to give.

Her hands shook but she told herself it was just cold, not fear, never fear, because fear meant weakness and weakness meant she would become everything she promised she would never be. Still, her lungs pulled shallow breaths like they were afraid to take up too much space.

She thought about love the way abandoned houses think about families, holding echoes in dusty corners, remembering footsteps that never came back. She wanted to believe she was easy to stay for, easy to understand, easy to hold without dropping, but her reflection always looked like a question nobody wanted to answer.

So she sat there bargaining with ghosts of conversations and almosts, pressing her forehead into her knees and pretending the weight in her chest was temporary, like storms always are, even when they flood everything.