The House in Parallel

The rooms hold their breath when you enter, furniture arranged in languages you've forgotten, light falling at angles that feel like betrayal.

The staircase still creaks at the third step— some things insist on their continuity— but your hand passes through the bannister's familiar groove and finds the wood has grown strange, its grain a stranger's palm.

In the kitchen, spoons lie in drawers like discarded letters, their silver dulled to the color of a dream half-remembered. You reach for the coffee cup, chipped at the rim, and it's warm as if someone just set it down, as if time here moves at a different speed.

The window faces the same street, but the neighbors have changed their names, their windows dark, and you realize you are the ghost in this house— that leaving is a kind of haunting.