A House That Lives In Me

I grew up in a house filled with doubt—
Where the air never warmed,
Where fear would shout and love was lost,
Where silence came with weight,
Heavy enough to press into my bones.

I watched my mother bite her tongue,
Each swallowed word a silent wound.
She folded herself small, becoming something breakable.
She learned to disappear,
Even while standing in the same room as I.

I watched my father stand still,
His hands could build and break.
They spoke in bruises, in the sharp crack of a belt.
Every day, the pattern replayed
As he never learned what love could host.

The thread unraveled,
Slowly, then all at once.
A morning when her eyes looked past me,
As if she was already gone.
Then one day, she was.

But the silence stayed.
The fear lived under my skin,
In the way I flinched at sudden movements,
In the way I held my breath when voices rose,
In the way love still feels like something I have to earn.

I tell myself I am safe now.
But still, I carry that house inside me.
I carry its broken doors and cold walls.
No matter how far I go, I still hear the echoes.
And still, I feel the ghost of my mother’s pain.