I thought sleeping in the arms of habit
was a kind of comfort.
I hadn’t realised I was already dead.
You exhausted me,
and I thought you were tired too.
It turns out
I was the only one whose house was burning.
You helped me put a roof over my head,
while taking apart
everything I had called home.
You couldn’t imagine growing old with me.
Yet my shoulders were wide enough.
There was room for both of us.
I learned to make my words smaller,
until even silence
seemed too heavy for you.
And still, you looked at me
as though you were listening.
Do you remember that night
when you were drunk
and wished we had always stayed friends?
I had carried you home on my back,
hundreds of metres,
and laid you down in bed.
You said it just before falling asleep.
Every question I laid between us
became another door
you chose to leave unopened.
And every silence
found a new place in me
to become a wound.
I knew the way back by heart.
My departures were never a mystery.
One turn to the right,
another to the left.
If you had looked for me,
you would have found me.
But you never really looked.
Perhaps I was among the things you loved.
The good days, the long nights,
the life we had made together.
You remember them all.
So do I.
But a house cannot stand
on the memory of beautiful evenings.
Sometimes one wall is all it takes
to bring the whole place down.
And there you were,
still telling me about the sunlight
coming through our windows,
as though light
could hold the roof in place.
I could have shown you photographs
of every room before the fire.
The table where we ate,
the bed where we slept,
the windows we left open in summer.
I knew the beauty of that house.
I had lived there too.
But you kept bringing me flowers
to a room without a floor.
And when I showed you the damage,
you spoke as though my eyes
had caused it.
As though naming the ruin
were somehow worse
than leaving it there.
You wanted my gratitude
for every beautiful thing,
and my silence
for everything that followed.
I wonder how many nights
you slept peacefully beside me,
certain that the warmth of your body
was enough to call it love.
How easily you mistook
being loved
for knowing how to love.
And how strange
that the person who carried you home
became the weight
you could no longer bear.
I am still standing
in the ruins of a place
where I thought we would grow old.
And somewhere in the wreckage
are all the things you did for me,
untouched,
beautiful,
and utterly useless
against the things you refused to see.
I used to wonder
how you could sleep
with the whole house burning.
Now I know.
You were never the one
who had to put out the fire.