The room that shrank

Moonlight caught the curling edges

of yellowed wallpaper peeling at the seams.

The smell of stale smoke and dust pressed thick,

a thick skin over the thin walls I used to climb.

The room was bigger then, or maybe I was small,

a place where corners stretched like shadows,

but now the walls lean in, tired, cracked,

a room folded tight around a smaller me.

Fingertips traced the rough edges,

paper curling like old wounds,

a place I knew by smell and scratch,

now less familiar in the dim light,

where silence feels too sharp,

and the space I filled feels empty,

shrunk down to a shiver beneath the sheets.