I sat on the floor of my own apartment

I sat on the floor of my own apartment

like I was trespassing.

The couch is gone. The bed is gone.

What's left is proof

that I was ever here at all.

The carpet is darker where they stood—

the couch, the chair, the bookshelf

that took up the whole east wall.

Darker. Like the sun never reached there,

like the room was protecting those shapes

all this time.

I lived a whole life in this space.

Arguments and laughing at 3 AM.

Mornings when I didn't want to get up.

The sound of rain on these windows.

All of it is gone now,

but the carpet remembers.

The carpet tells the truth.

I tried to vacuum the shadows away.

The rectangles stayed.

So I'm leaving them for the next person,

these marks of a life that was here,

these bruises on the floor

where something heavy sat for years

and made its absence permanent.