When Rooms Are Made of Matchsticks

Alone in the bed of someone you love,

You can hear their mother’s footsteps upstairs.

Breakfast. Smells like burning. She’s singing.

Light streaks in from a tiny basement window.

The linoleum floor is sad and wet with august rain.

You are sitting at the edge of a push pin.

You have been woven together like this for months.

This is the same bed you have cried in,

Over the ghosts we never notice until they find us like that.

This is the same bed you have danced on,

Until you slammed your head on the low ceiling

And collapsed into laughter on the cotton sheets.

You threw up over the edge onto the cold floor.

You slammed your fist into the headboard and screamed.

You loved someone in the nest of your arms

Until your heartbeats sounded like the same solid rhythm.

This is the room you lock the door to,

So that you can only see the outside from the tiny basement window.

A perfect square. It’s cracked at the corner,

A thread of spider web veins glinting glass.

Light barely remembers how to shine here anymore.

The lightbulbs flicker and sputter out,

As if tired of exhaling.

This is the room that saw you naked,

Twirling in the mirror to spy the bite marks.

It saw you, shaking on the floor, and held its breath.

This is the room that saw you drinking bleach.

You hide it underneath the sink that you puked into.

It is next to the tub where he washed your feet clean.

He held your hair back and you trailed dirt on the porcelain.

You were bleeding adrenaline, like gold.

This room saw you craft excuses.

It has been waiting for you to sweat the truth out

Like a telltale lipstick smear.

This room saw you stare at the ceiling long enough

To find constellations and map out

Exit strategies.

This room knew the truth about you, and him,

And held its breath, afraid to answer.

This room saw you when you didn’t want to see yourself.

Leaving isn’t easy. This room sets fire to you.

It burns your skin a cruel calloused red.

It burns you slowly, from the inside until

You can feel the flames in your fingers

As you twist the doorknob and hear it shut.

You can leave this room. You can never return.

You can throw your things back into your bag

And storm out of the back door to greet

The world you thought had vanished outside �"

But it will burn you, like an unforgiving wildfire

Is spreading through your veins

And miles away,

A boy in a flannel shirt

Will smell the smoke.