The Wall

The house doesn’t feel like home in the same way. That line sounds dramatic until you live it. The furniture is here. The smells are mostly the same. The walls haven’t moved. Same stairs, same rooms, same clutter, same weird places where the floor creaks. But home was not a structure. Home was a person integrated into the structure. Now some rooms feel like exhibits. Some corners feel radioactive. Some nights the whole place feels too small for the grief and too empty for the memories at the same time. And because I’m still here, still maintaining it, still paying for it, still trying to keep it safe for the kids, I can’t even get distance from it. I have to live inside the evidence. That’s another joke grief plays: it takes away the person and leaves you in the habitat.