The bathroom mirror always fogs with someone else’s breath, even when I’m alone and the ghosts have gone to bed.
There’s a patch in the garden where I buried a handful of old piano keys. I dance on the spot, trying to remember the song grandma used to play, but the ground swallows the melody, and I trip over notes that won’t stay buried.
Every time someone stops speaking to another person in this house, the kitchen table grows a new ring like an oak tree, until it’s too thick to reach across.
The dollhouse in the attic has a mind of its own. Every morning, the tiny chairs are rearranged into a circle like the ghosts of the dolls hosted book club or a very tense intervention.
The blue sewing tin in the hallway closet doesn’t hold needles and thread. It’s filled with the sharp, silver shadows of every argument in this house, and if you open it, they burrow themselves beneath your nails like splinters.
The floorboards in the upstairs hallway hold onto footsteps for hours, releasing them at night so the house sounds like it’s pacing or fleeing or looking for a fight.
The wallpaper in the master bedroom is made of moths. If you speak out of turn, they’ll flutter their wings against the plaster until it sounds like a thousand voices shushing you at once.
The milk in the fridge sours the moment the front door slams. It doesn’t matter if it was opened five minutes ago or if it’s well before expiration. It knows when the air has soured and curdles out of sympathy.
There’s a special blanket that if it’s draped just right between the end of the bed and dresser, opens a doorway to a field of flowers in colors never seen before.
I don’t sleep with the light on anymore.