The House Keeps Its Own Hours

The House Keeps Its Own Hours

The house has fallen asleep.

Its beams, which spoke all day in familiar creaks,

have settled into silence.

Even the clock,

faithful keeper of ordinary things,

has softened its insistence,

as though time itself were careful not to wake what has finally found rest.

Only one room refuses.

There is no sound except the measured economy of breathing through another wall.

How curious

that a chest can become so crowded

without moving a single piece of furniture.

The first thought arrives quietly.

It asks for nothing.

Before it has chosen where to sit,

the others gather.

Each brings its own impossible question.

Each insists upon being answered before dawn.

Nothing has happened.

Nothing is happening.

Still,

the pulse begins preparing for a calamity that has forgotten to arrive.

The body, earnest and undiscerning,

believes every rehearsal.

There is a discipline

to swallowing tears.

Not because one wishes to appear strong,

but because sorrow,

if given a voice,

might slip beneath the door

and trouble those who have found what sleep has withheld from you.

So they remain,

warm behind the eyes,

cool upon the bridge of the nose,

drawn back one careful breath at a time.

Morning will mistake them for weariness.

It has done so before.

Once,

an iron rested against my wrist

longer than attention allowed.

The skin remembered.

Weeks later

it still carried its quiet crescent,

like a seal pressed into cooling wax.

There was a voice,

clever enough to borrow my own,

that regarded the mark

with a terrible calm,

as though suffering had simply found the place it expected.

I have learned

that not every voice deserves to be believed.

Some are only echoes

wandering abandoned halls,

mistaking themselves for truth.

Yet after midnight,

when darkness has emptied itself into every corner,

they become remarkably persuasive.

If you had entered the room,

you would have found

nothing remarkable.

A closed door.

Folded blankets.

A face turned toward the wall,

breathing carefully,

sniffing away the evidence,

counting the spaces between heartbeats

as though numbers might persuade them to remain ordinary.

This is the peculiar craft of invisible weather.

It topples no chimney.

It shatters no window.

It leaves the wallpaper undisturbed.

Only somewhere

beneath the plaster,

where no guest would think to listen,

the whole house

holds its breath,

waiting

for a storm

that exists

only

within its walls.