I Never Left

I keep the curtains closed.
Not for the light—
but for the eyes
that watch from the street,
too long,
too knowingly.

They don’t see me.
Not yet.

But they speak to the walls,
and the walls whisper back.

They came in the spring.
A family.
With shoes too loud
and voices too bright,
tracking mud through the thresholds
I once guarded like scripture.

They laugh in the kitchen
where I wept.
They play music in the parlour
where silence once hung
like lace.

They sleep in my bed.
Their daughter traces the windows
with breath that fogs the glass.
I wipe it away.
She draws it back.
Again.
And again.

The mother says it’s just old air.
But the child knows.
She knows I hum to her at night.

I leave messages in the mirror—
soft, wet words
that vanish when they turn on the lights.
They never read them.

But the dog won’t go near the stairs.

I tried to leave once.
I followed them out,
stepped into the garden,
past the rusted gate.

But the wind turned cold
and the sky bent wrong.
The trees groaned like they remembered
what happened here.

I turned back.
The house called.
It always does.

Now they speak of shadows.
Of feeling watched.
Of waking to find the front door
wide open.
Of footsteps that begin
on the third step
and never reach the landing.

They say the house feels sad.
That it holds its breath.

They don’t know
what breath costs.

They don't know
the thing they see out of the corner of their eye
is not waiting to hurt them.
It's remembering.

And every night,
when the mother checks the locks
for the second,
third,
fourth time—
I’m standing behind her,
just close enough
to feel the warmth she wastes.

I never left.

They’re the ones
who moved in.
The ones
who won’t go.
The ones
who breathe.

And I—

I am what the house
refuses
to forget.