The floorboards knew I was coming.
They groaned the way old cuts do
when weather changes,
pulling memory to their surface
like something swollen under the skin.
I stepped inside anyway.
Dust rose as if startled,
not by my arrival,
but by the fact that I had come alone—
as though it had expected others
who used to follow me,
their laughter soft enough
to fit between the walls.
But laughter rots fastest.
In the corner, the wallpaper peeled back
in long, rolling strips,
revealing handwriting beneath—
my handwriting—
marking heights I do not remember growing to.
I touched the paper.
It shivered.
Somewhere in the hallway
a door closed by itself,
not violently,
but with the heavy calm
I should have left then.
Instead, I followed the sound,
because the air felt thinner now,
as if the house was breathing in
and had not yet decided
whether it would breathe me out.
At the end of the hall was a mirror
I did not remember owning.
Its surface was fogged
from the inside.
I wiped it clean with my sleeve—
and my reflection lagged behind,
a fraction of a second too slow,
eyes still closed
when mine were open.
It raised its hand before I did.
“Welcome back,”
it mouthed
with my lips,
my teeth,
my breath that wasn’t of mine.
The house exhaled.
Floorboards settled.
Dust laid still.
The hall stretched longer behind me,
shorter in front.
And I understood then:
it wasn’t the mirror that trapped me.
It was the moment
the house remembered my name
while I had long forgotten it.