بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

what clings to the walls like glue from tape left on too long?
there is a feeling when i step through the doorway
just that particular shade of “sea foam” green, mint ice-cream, spinach in milk
every day i lived as a spinach leaf suspended in hot ice-cream clings to the walls
tighter than the milky mint paint and so wrong, twisted, strange
the room is a mug
tea-stained with my tear stains
the house remembers
all the words said within
they belong to it, now
they seep back out
they belong to me, so when i step through the doorframe they seep into me
and stain me hibiscus red
hibiscus tea seep out of the cuts i cut a long time ago and now tend to forget
if i open my mouth to speak, all that which belongs to the house and i runs down my throat and fills my stomach until it spills from between my teeth so there is no room
to speak
no space to feel
anything but the drowning, the dying of my soul
spaces hold energy in the shape of them
the orientation of the people who lived in them
so the floor holds me, the floor i sat on to study and cry and sleep and paint and write and seep
the door holds their slams and bangs and the screams that seeped through it to flood my ears from between my finger-bones
spaces hold a haunting
the ghosts of memory
so the room has all my ghosts and reduces me to a ghost when i step through the doorway
my memories seep out of it and overtake me as they seep into me how can i make you understand the two way movement of past and present, dark and cold, slow and silence, the space is the trauma that occurred in it the room is the scream that was built in it the house is the words that were said in it