In the day, the house wore white.
Curtains breathing in sunlight,
steel vessels singing in the sink,
my mother’s bangles touching each other like soft applause.
My father reading the newspaper out loud,
pausing to ask my opinion
as if I had always mattered.
There were oil-slick braids before school.
Extra sugar in my milk.
A hand at the small of my back
guiding me across the road.
If you had come at noon,
you would have envied me.
The walls were cream.
The floors were polished.
Nothing was broken.
Only at night did the air change weight.
It wasn’t always shouting.
Sometimes it was the opposite —
a thickness.
A held breath stretching too far.
I don’t remember deciding to wake up.
I just did.
Again.
And again.
As if something inside me
kept missing a step in sleep.
The ceiling fan would turn in circles
like it was trying to go somewhere
and couldn’t.
I would sit up slowly,
heart already ahead of me,
listening to the space between sounds.
The hallway was colder than my room.
It always felt like entering water.
I knew where to place my feet.
I knew which tiles betrayed me.
Outside their door,
I would stand very still.
Sometimes there were voices —
sharp, then soft, then sharp again.
Sometimes the kind of quiet
that hums.
I never knocked.
Just a thin opening.
A blade of light.
Two shapes in the dark.
Breathing.
Enough.
Back to bed.
Eyes open.
Waiting for morning to rinse the house clean again.
And it always did.
Breakfast.
Laughter.
My father’s hand on my head in blessing.
My mother adjusting my collar twice.
Love can exist in a house
that does not know how to rest.
No one told me anything was wrong.
So I learned to feel for it instead.
Years later,
different room,
different door,
different breathing beside me —
I still wake up.
Not because of noise.
But because of absence.
If a text takes too long,
if a sentence lands half a shade cooler,
if the air shifts by a degree —
my body stands up.
It does not ask permission.
It moves down a hallway
that no longer exists.
I scroll.
I reread.
I measure tone like temperature.
“Are you okay?”
I ask it gently.
Like I am asking about the weather.
He says yes.
And he means it.
The house is calm now.
My parents sleep through the night.
They call to say they miss me.
They send pictures of the same cream walls.
Nothing is happening.
That is the problem.
Nothing has always meant
listen harder.
So I do.
I lie next to love
and keep one ear open.
I count breaths that are not mine.
I watch for flickers under closed doors.
I rehearse disasters that never arrive.
Morning always comes.
Everything looks untouched.
Perfect.
But somewhere in me,
a corridor is lit.
And I am still walking it,
barefoot,
again,
again,
again.
