Atlas of Unlit Rooms

A moth drifts the hallway, a faint paper lantern, its wings reading the dust like braille. Rooms hold their breath behind doors of varnished rain, each knob a small planet waiting to be turned.

I walk the house that was never built, measuring with my palms the width of imagined light. In the study, a desk listens for the weight of a letter, and the chair keeps the silhouette of a patient hour.

Downstairs, the kitchen hums with the ghost of copper, an old kettle polishing the air with silence. The sink is a shallow sea; the drain its quiet whirl, a tiny weather system for all we forgot to say.

Outside, the streetlamp is a lone astronomer, charting the slow migration of sleepless leaves. I fold the map of these unlit rooms into my coat, and carry home a warm square of dark.