There are rooms I don’t return to.

Not because they’re locked,
but because the air inside still knows my name
and it whispers it like a memory that hasn’t healed.

Some rooms smell like rain on the day everything fell apart.
Others echo with laughter that no longer belongs to me.
A photo on the wall, a coffee stain on the floor
souvenirs from a version of myself I left behind.

We all carry these places,
quiet corridors in the mind,
where time folds in on itself
and grief hangs like dust in sunlight.

I pass them in dreams, sometimes.
I never stay long.

But I still nod to the silence
like an old friend I once loved deeply
and had to leave behind.

There’s a room with a window that never opened,
where I learned how to smile through my teeth
and convince myself it was happiness.
The wallpaper curled like it, too, was tired of pretending.

Another room has a chair where I waited for someone
who never came.
The waiting still sits there
patient, eternal, untouched.

And then there’s the smallest room,
tucked away behind all the rest.
It holds nothing but a single word I never said.
It hums like a pulse.
It glows faintly.
It is the quietest,
and somehow, the loudest.

I don’t visit these places often.
But when the world outside goes still,
when the noise dies down and I’m left
with only the rhythm of my own breathing.

they knock.

And for a moment, I remember
that healing is not always about opening every door.
Sometimes it’s about knowing
which ones to let remain closed
and learning to live peacefully
with the echoes that still call your name.