I knew a girl —weathered by the kind of life that
doesn’t  warn you before the storm. Still, she tried
to keep a spring in her step — but smiled like cheap
paint on a fading wall, peeling off, little by little,
every **** day.

She told me: "We don’t own enough to be claiming it all."
She’d hold onto the hands of time like it owed her
something, clocking in for the kind of love that clocks
out as soon as it settles in your mind.

And I swear — it was always the careless water she
feared the most... the kind you drown in without
noticing —a pretty smile, a warm voice, the open
door that leads you straight to your own unraveling.
I watched her from that doorway — wondered which
room of herself she let people sit in.

Was it the heart —that wicked room where love
rushes in faster than you can catch your breath?

Or the soul — too expensive for lips that try
to bargain it down with sweet nothings?

Maybe it was the skin —that kept aching for touch,
even when desire left bruises where tenderness
should have lived.

Or the mind — God, the most attractive part of her,
modelling strength on a runway of thoughts that walked
out daily for the world to judge. And maybe the reason
her story broke me was because I saw myself in every
cracked wall she tried to paint over, and over again.

We are all just houses hoping someone might stay
long enough to know the rooms we rarely let them in.