What My Voice Sounds Like When I Mean It

I heard myself.

That's the part I can't explain—

not what I said to her,

which I meant and still mean,

but the way it came back at me

off the concrete, off the tile,

off the close walls of the stairwell

before the sentence was even finished.

Like the building was repeating me

to my own face.

I hadn't known I sounded like that

when I was serious.

Lower than I thought.

Certain in a way that frightened me

more than her leaving did.

The door at the bottom swung.

Slowed.

The gap narrowed.

Stopped.

And then just my breathing—

and the sound of what I'd said

still sitting in the air

the way smoke sits

when there's no window.

I went upstairs.

I haven't knocked on her door.

I keep thinking about the ceiling

and the floor

and what lives in the space between them

when no one is talking.