The house (pt.6)

 I hold them now.

After the story should have ended.

After the candles, after the light broke through my seams.

They walk my rooms like ghosts, not gone, but not alive the way they once were.

The man moves slowly, his body a war-torn map of aches.

Every chair sighs under his weight.

Every window watches him flinch at shadows only he can see.

He is not cruel, not even bitter, but he carries pain like weather, and the forecast never changes.

The woman drifts restlessly.

Her footsteps are too quick. Too loud for a home meant for peace.

She wants more; more space, more joy, more proof that the light did not burn out.

But every want leaves her emptier. She tries to swallow it down, but her hunger rattles inside my walls.

Together they are here, but their days are not golden. They are pale. A gray kind of living.

She is a five.

He is a three.

And I, the house, am the keeper of numbers that don’t climb higher.

I do not judge.

I do not fix.

I only echo their breathing, their silence, their half-kept promises to themselves.

There is no ending yet. Only waiting.

Only the weight of wanting. The weight of pain, and the light that still lingers in corners.

Reminding me of Him.