Settling

Floorboards groan beneath the weight of hours we never noticed passing— the house exhales into darkness, its wooden spine adjusting.

In the walls, conversations crystallize: yesterday's laughter settles like dust on the high shelves we cannot reach, each argument leaves a hairline fracture in the plaster we pretend not to see.

The silence is not empty. It hums with the presence of absence, with all the things we meant to say but swallowed instead, letting them sink into the foundation like roots.

And still the house holds us, creaking its slow lullaby— a reminder that everything, even stone and timber, learns to live with the weight of what it cannot speak.