It started with the walls breathing.

Just once.

A slow inhale,

like the house was waking up hungry.

You told yourself it was nothing.

Old pipes.

A dream.

The cold.

But now the corners bend when you’re not looking.

Photographs rearrange themselves,

faces smudged,

eyes turned inward.

The smell of dirt

rises from the carpet.

No one answers your calls anymore.

The phone rings,

but it’s always your voice on the other end.

Screaming.

Whispering.

Begging you to run,

but there’s nowhere to go.

The clocks drip.

The stairs multiply.

You bite your nails to the bone

just to feel something that belongs to you.

You try light.

Salt.

Knives.

Nothing bites back.

When all else fails, what do we rely on?

Hope?

Gone.

Faith?

Laughed out of the room.

Yourself?

You are the door it came through.

You were never haunted.

You were built for this.

And it’s been inside

since the first time you asked

if you were alone.

Tonight, you dream of dirt.

But you don’t wake up.

Because something else

woke up instead