Chapter 10 · 4 min 27 sec
The House We Couldn't Leave
The family home as a living thing — how spaces hold the memory of those who loved them.
Lyrics· 354 words
You found me staring at the ceiling again Three in the morning, talking to ghosts in My head The television flickered blue on the walls Like a lighthouse for ships that were already lost I said I was fine, you knew I was lying But neither of us wanted to start that fight
So I disappeared into longer nights Into crowded rooms and city lights Trying to outrun things I couldn't name I lit little fires all over the house Just to see who would stay I broke every window I could find Just to keep the daylight away But no matter how hard I ran
No matter how far I went There you were Like you always are The hardest truths never make a sound They live in the spaces between what comes out That I'm tired, they're not tonight, that nothing's wrong Repeated a thousand times I thought if I carried the weight alone
Nobody else would have to feel it But all I did was make the distance grow And every road I took to disappear Somehow led me back here I lit little fires all over the house Just to see who would stay I broke every window I could find Just to keep the daylight away
But no matter how hard I ran No matter how far I went There you were Like you always are Maybe family isn't blood Maybe it isn't names Maybe it's the people who stand in the rain While you're screaming at the sky
Trying to convince the stars You don't need saving And I know, I know I've made it hard I've made it hard To love me sometimes I lit little fires all over the house And watched the smoke fill every room
I thought if I pushed you far enough You'd finally leave town But when the walls came down And the embers died You were standing there On the other side Waiting Like you always were
The house is quiet now The ghosts don't talk as much And for the first time I think I'm ready To tell the truth
*A story about the homes that live in us*
The night before the move, Inês could not sleep.
She walked through the empty rooms in her socks. Without the furniture, the house looked different — larger and more serious, like it was remembering how to be just a building again.
She stood in the kitchen doorway. She had eaten breakfast at that table for nine years. She had done homework there. She had cried there once, over a friendship that ended badly, while her mother made tea and didn't try to fix anything, just sat across from her and let her cry.
She walked to the living room. The wall by the window had the pencil marks from when they measured her height every birthday. Her mother had said they would paint over them before selling, but they hadn't, and Inês wondered what the next family would think of them — a series of short lines with dates and a name, a small record of a girl growing.
She saved her bedroom for last.
Nine years of sleeping here. Nine years of that particular quality of darkness, the sound of traffic on the street below, the way the morning light came in at an angle that made squares on the floor in summer.
She sat on the bare floor where her bed had been and tried to memorise it. The creak of the floorboard near the window. The way the radiator ticked when it came on. The smell of the wood and the old plaster and something else she couldn't name — the smell of a place that knew her, she thought, even though she knew that was not quite a real thing.
She heard her father come to the doorway. He sat down next to her on the floor without saying anything, which was exactly right.
After a while he said: "You know what the strange thing about houses is?"
"What?"
"They don't really stay behind," he said. "You carry them. I still know exactly what my childhood bedroom smelled like. I can hear the stairs from my grandmother's house. These rooms — they come with us."
Inês leaned into him.
"Promise?" she said.
"Look," he said. "You're already doing it."
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*The homes we love become part of us — and that part travels wherever we go.*
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