Elsewhere

The mailbox holds letters addressed to us in a place we no longer sleep.

Forwarding doesn't reach everything— the handwritten notes, the photographs loose in drawers. They stay, claiming the floors we've abandoned.

You called it shedding skin. I called it archaeology, digging backward through dust and drawer-pull, finding versions of ourselves we forgot to pack.

What stays isn't ours to choose. The walls remember our colors. The key turns in the lock like memory, stiff from disuse, still knowing the shape of home.