Perhaps that’s why
I remain unmoving—
your lies wedged deep between the sofa cushions.

These walls reverberate the evidence you were once happy here,
still hum with our fractured words,
a radio’s static
I can’t dial down.

The floors, no…the floors
are our legs, entwined,
your vulnerability,
oh, how your softness
softened the unyielding wood
beneath us.

Now they creak beneath my steps,
groaning under the weight
of our shattered promises.

The life we built, buried
in the masonry,
no longer strong enough
to bear its weight.

It slipped,
piece by piece,
through the fissures,
wounded by the falling stonework
left in its wake.

And yet, I stay.

The air still carries your essence
lingering
in the silence between breaths.

Even the light feels heavier now,
filtering through curtains you chose
pooling in shadows
where your love used to be.

Outside, the world keeps moving,
unaffected
by the quiet collapse
within these walls.

But here,
the clocks run slower—
each tick
another reminder.

Perhaps that’s why
I can’t leave,
because leaving means erasing.

And even ruins
deserve to remember
what it was like
to be whole.

---

Molly Smith is a writer and poet based in the North West of England. Her work explores emotional landscapes and human connection, drawing on psychology and personal experience.