By the End of the Month

She said it three times—

they want me to leave by the end of the month.

Her voice cracked on "month," actually

broke mid-word like bone bending too far.

I sat in my empty apartment on a box,

not moving, barely breathing,

an accidental witness to her worst moment.

I didn't know her name.

Didn't know who "they" were or why.

Just knew the sound of a person

losing her grip on her own life,

the way her voice fractured mid-syllable,

the way she tried to breathe through it

and couldn't quite make it.

This is how you learn about strangers—

not introduction, not choice,

but through walls too thin,

through the accident of proximity,

through the specific moment someone's voice breaks

and you're there to hear it.

I don't know what happened to her.

Don't know if she found somewhere else

or if she packed her things

and left by the date they gave her.

I just know that sound.

The exact moment her voice gave out.

The exact texture of that breaking.

She didn't know I was listening.

Didn't know she was giving me

the most intimate thing—

not by choice, but by necessity,

by walls, by the cruelty

of proximity.

I'll probably never meet her.

I'll probably never know

if she made it out, if she found

somewhere safer, somewhere home.

I'll just have this—the sound

of her voice cracking on a word,

the sound of losing everything,

the sound of someone I don't know

telling me exactly what it sounds like

when the ground goes away.