A silhouette that never was
The chair by the wall stays cool.
No one pressed their weight into it.
Still, it waits the way skin waits for a hand.
A light hums in the other room.
Left on past its use.
Morning comes slower because of it.
Or maybe it always did.
Footsteps climb the stairs each night.
They stop one step short.
The stair keeps its dust.
Nothing finishes the climb.
Rooms shrink after dark.
Not by inches.
By breath.
Walls lean in without moving.
I feel it most in pauses.
Coffee gone cold.
Letters started, not sent.
Days set aside for later.
There is no outline to name.
No edge to follow with the eye.
Only a darkening,
like damp spreading through dry cloth
where no water touched.
It feeds on waiting.
On the plan pushed to tomorrow.
On the call made too late,
or not at all.
I thought it stood apart from me.
Something hovering near my life.
But it grows when i do not.
It thickens when i fade.
It was never a separate thing.
It was what i cast
by staying halfway here.
Now it reaches my feet.
My chest.
My face.
Now it fills the room.
There is nowhere left to stand.
I don’t see it anymore
because it is all that remains.