Lyric

The door opened with a cardboard sigh

Dust rose like something nearly alive

My window was carrying someone else’s winter

Folded in plastic, numbered by size

The bed had gone without a sentence

A ladder leaned where sleep had been

Old coats pressed their shoulders together

Guarding the dark I used to live in

No one meant to be cruel

That was the cruelest part

They named the room Storage

And spoke as if nothing had changed

My past was stacked by the heater

Too light to keep, too heavy to claim

A lamp shade bloomed under newspaper

A broken clock kept its face to the wall

My school books slept beneath guest blankets

Like witnesses nobody planned to call

I touched a label in my mother’s writing

Holiday plates, spare towels, rain

Her letters had grown careful and smaller

As if even ink had learned restraint

The house did not reject me

It simply made use of the space

I stood where my bed had once taken

The shape of a boy staying late

There are rooms that forgive your leaving

By learning another name

A childhood does not vanish

It is sorted, taped, and lifted

Carried upstairs by tired hands

Until absence looks gifted

I could have taken a photograph

Or opened one box for proof

But mercy sometimes looks like not asking

What has already replaced you

So I closed the door without drama

Left the dust to settle alone

Some part of me stayed folded there

Useful, silent, never thrown