Room Without Windows

I learned to call it quiet

I learned to call it fine

I built a house of habit

And I lived inside the line

The days came dressed as each other

I wore them all the same

I stopped expecting answers

I forgot I had a name

There’s a kind of peace in shrinking

Till you fit inside the frame

A photograph of someone

You can no longer claim

I made a truce with smallness

I shook hands with the grey

I told myself that emptiness

Was just another way

And the walls became my skin

And the silence became my voice

And I called the cage a kingdom

And I called the lack a choice

I don’t remember closing

Every window, every door

I just woke up one morning

Not knowing what the light was for

Sometimes something flickered

At the edges of the dream

A scent I couldn’t place

A half-remembered stream

But I’d learned to turn away

Before the ache could start

I was fluent in forgetting

It was the language of my heart

Is this what it means to live?

This slow agreeing to disappear?

This calling the numb sacred?

This genuflecting to the fear?

I didn’t know that I was waiting

I didn’t know I’d stopped

I thought the well was empty

I didn’t know I’d locked the top

But somewhere underneath the floor

Beneath the years of stone

Something still remembers

Something’s making its way home

And I can almost hear it now

A voice I used to know

Calling from a country

I left so long ago…