Three Poems

Basement Arteries

There’s a hum beneath the floorboards,
low and constant, like regret rehearsing its lines.
Mother whispers it’s the furnace.
I know better.

Every winter, the air thickens with ghosts of burnt dust.
Pipes rattle like baby teeth in a jar.
Somewhere below the crawlspace,
something breathes — slow, measured, patient.

I press my ear to the vent.
It sounds like water learning to drown itself.
I want to call it father,
but the word still bites when I try.

The house has arteries of copper and rust.
When the heat kicks on,
it’s like blood remembering its purpose.

I walk room to room,
touching walls that remember me younger,
fewer scars, smaller prayers.
The hum grows louder when I stop listening.

If I open the door to the basement,
will it stop pretending to be warmth?
Will it speak the truth —
that every home is a body,
and every body, a burning house?

Women Love Conversation

“Women love conversation.”

Yet, I am a woman
and hate the sound of my own voice.
How brittle it is
in the mirror of others’ faces,
watching it reflect back
and prick me with its shards;
the glass always breaks.

Oftentimes,
there are fingers digging
down the back of my throat,
past the gag —
palms pressing up against my jugular,
trying to pry more words out,
trying to understand
why they won’t come out on their own.

I’m tired of the plucking, the pulling,
the questions as to why
I don’t take advantage
of the silence every time it opens up.

It’s not mine for the taking.
It never has been.

House of Misery

I built a house from my unspoken backbone.
Nailed down the floorboards with every lie I never meant.
Hung curtains to shelter my whispered prayers
that never made it to God.

The front door is splintered out of the grief I’ve swallowed,
still sticky from silence that strangled me whole.
The roof is tacked and torn, still leaking misery
from every night spent with my fists curled in my mouth.

There are no mirrors on the walls.
Only windows that warp the truth of the love I was given,
something I was forced to wrap myself in.
Sometimes, I watch myself through the glass,
the girl who stands as if she didn’t inherit
every ache her bloodline ever bottled.

Grandma’s recipes left the kitchen years before,
the stench of burnt apologies and father’s whiskey left behind.
The bedroom knows all my secrets, every footstep,
every version of the girl that begged to be heard.

Still, I keep the lights on.

Even the ghosts deserve to see
what they’ve made of me.