welcome to a place you used to call home and now is full of strangers

the smell of coffee, forgotten faith, and lost memories cling to the bronze walls - broken friendships (at least partially your fault) taste like bitter chocolate and your could-have-beens echo off the high ceilings

upside down city lights drown in the reflection of leftover rainwater - your tires slash through them and you think quietly about the skin on your forearms

your favorite album isn’t enough to drown the pit of guilt in your stomach and the raindrops don’t wash away your anxiety no matter how hard you wish that they will

what used to be a mirror is now broken, and the shards jab at you, not hard enough to break your skin, but enough to know that something is very wrong

that candle you forgot to blow out last night makes your room smell like every other thing that you left unattended until they grew to be too big for you to handle anymore

you are odysseus, and the world is both scylla and charybdis. you can only hope you’ll make it home.