americana dream / where you never were

the house appears again.

she dreams in sepia,

she’s shy in the morning light,

peeling at the corners,

but still standing bright.

floral wallpaper curling at the seams,

smelling like dust,

boiled peaches,

and something waiting.

a small miracle,

two cups on the table.

one untouched.

the air smells like burnt sugar and old brass,

like something sweet once tried to survive here.

chet baker plays on the turntable,

like he doesn’t know you left.

the trumpet hums as if grief is a key,

and i still wear it around my neck.

your shape remains carved in the sofa,

like you never really got up,

like you’re still there, 

just turned sideways,

just out of reach.

still warm,

still cruel.

the guitar in the corner

never learned how to forget your fingerprints.

she hums sometimes,

low, in the dead heat of a summer afternoon.

i never touch her.

not out of boredom;

but fear that

i’d remember how you watched me played

and how you never asked for an encore.

the cats have names,

but i won’t say them aloud.

they sit their ginger furs like poems,

soft and delicate,

quietly waiting for the right reader.

sometimes they paw at the door,

they watch it like it owes them something,

like you might walk in,

like you ever lived here at all,

like they, too, remember what didn’t happen.

but you didn’t. not really.

this dream house of mine;

these hallways,

this slow-burning kitchen,

they only exist 

because i kept loving you

long after you were gone.

and i’ve been scrubbing your name out of everything ever since;

drowning in washing plates from a dinner never served,

repainting the rooms left with white mattresses and dust,

hosting for the ghosts in the hallway.

the stove lights itself at dusk,

like an old prayer

i never learned to stop saying.

maybe it thinks you’ll come back hungry,

maybe i do too.

have i always been like this ever since,

dodging your favorite records,

spitting out your favorite meals,

wearing red just to pretend 

it doesn’t look like your hoodie?

have i always avoided the things 

that smelled like you,

like wood sage and crushed velvet and quiet mercy?

have i drowned myself in loud rooms,

cheap perfume,

dumber versions of myself,

just to keep from hearing your laughter 

in the broken bits of my walls?

and a confession, again:

i saw what you gave as the strangest altar;

soft-lit, but sharp-edged.

i bled for it quietly,

drowning in the silent drops of my own blood,

of all the layers i tried to hide,

but you knew.

and i've made myself hard for anyone to stay,

turns out you didn't too.

and i'm grieving a home no one ever built,

mourn a life that never happened,

but god,

i still want to live there.

with you.

where we're just two people,

and the light's always golden,

and nothing ever breaks.

with the stove still heats for two,

every evening, like a ritual.

habit. hope.

just in case.