The House Speaking

3 AM and the hallway floorboard

creaks. Just the house settling,

just wood and time and temperature

doing their thing. I know this.

The sound still stops my heart.

The light under the bedroom door—

thin, pale, the dust visible in it

like something floating. The house

breathes around me. Or I breathe

around the house. I can't tell

which direction the air moves.

The floorboard creaks again.

No one is walking.

The house is just being itself,

talking to itself in a language

I'm learning too late to understand.

I stand in the dark hallway.

The light under the door

is the only thing that's real.

Everything else is sound

and silence taking turns.