i sit upright, cross legged, chest heavy with ghosts
and transparent in a trapped beam of daybreak.
my back against the nightstand that was my grandfathers before mine.
he is dead and the top two drawers do not close right.

in the first lies a razor blade i have not used since i was 17,
it sits atop a birthday card from someone i can’t truthfully still call a friend
we don’t speak
but there is still a home for her in my life, the bed made and warm, should she ever choose to return.

there are a hundred pictures strewn around of someone i no longer am
i feel the weight of her in this place
i paint the walls and strip the bed and throw away my clothes
but this is still her room, not mine.
i can hear her crying late at night when the tissue paper curtains let in too much light to sleep

i don’t look like her anymore
she feels dead, is dead, was dead the moment i stopped being her and became someone else
but when i flip through my life like a waiting room magazine i cannot find where it happened

i know she was afraid of losing herself
i remember the fear, heavy and cold wrapped around my spine, crawling into my rib cage
i don’t know how to tell her i did, and i’m happier for it
she is lost and she is gone and i am free so WHY can i not escape
why does my head fill with static when i think about my life for too long

i clean her things, finally throwing away the memories that mean nothing beyond the act of rememberance
letting go of a life that no longer feels like mine
grieving a death that didn’t happen
i wonder if that’s why my friends don’t speak to me
because i am not myself, and yet i can’t be anything else
i put that thought in a box with the other things and set it aside for the dump

this room is mine for the next two months,
after that i’ll run back to the damp safety of another city where her ghost cannot find me
and i’ll find the peace she could not
and, just maybe, one day i will catch my own eye in the mirror
and she won’t be dead at all
she’ll be right where i left her

until then, i’ll throw away her things, paint the walls again, exorcise my cell until i can lie down and breathe without the hand around my throat