A Day After Suicide

I found her corpse

And I hate her for it

The monitor pulses

I always watch videos of empty rooms that look like yours

But with the door open

I found your clothes in the kitchen drawer

The room where you first learned to love the dark

The server stopped breathing at 3 AM

My reflection loads slower every year

Exit signs pointing at empty walls

The worst part isn't what happened

It's how normal everything looked right after

Do you remember when we thought the internet was made of silicon?

And not skin trapped between house keys?

We keep mistaking survival for healing

But healing felt suspicious

The sky is the color of a waiting room

And I haven't made peace with the chairs yet

Every door leads back to the middle of the hallway you just left

The sunset has been saved as a permanent desktop

But the wind only blows when you close your eyes

I thought I met someone new

But it was you

It's always you

And it's never you

The VHS tape was labeled “First Birthday”

But when you play it

You’re already thirty and crying in a kitchen that hasn’t been built yet

I left a glass of water on the nightstand in summer 99

It's still waiting for you to be thirsty

Bruises on your knees like watercolor paintings

We look for our childhood in abandoned buildings

As the ceiling learns your handwriting

And hoofprints happears on the cracked floor

The five eyed deer erases the memories of the ones you loved

Call them, and tell them you miss them

But if you answer the phone

You’ll hear yourself screaming from the other side of the wall

There're tears hidden inside the CRT glow

The project blueprint of your home

Contains an angle that cannot exist in three dimensions

That is where the nostalgic smell comes from

"Can you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Us."

This house is a closed loop

If you run out of your bedroom fast enough

You'll catch a glimpse of your own back disappearing into the living room

You’ve been chasing your own shadow since you were 9

Memory is the cruelest architect

We buried our childhood under the floorboards

A graveyard made of ebony wood

And now the house grows wild roses made of copper wire and old polaroids

Faded, golden, bleeding at the edges into an absolute, beautiful dark

We are not lost in a labyrinth

We are just memories the house is trying not to forget

The windows don't look out into the street anymore

They look into the exact moment we realized we could never go back

I thought I met someone new

But it was you

It's always you

And it's never you