it started with a key. not mine, but pressed into my palm like a promise, like a wound that wouldn’t clot. they said, you are the bearer now. like i had a choice. like i could toss it in the river and sleep easy.

the key fit every door but never the ones i wanted. it opened houses i had never lived in, rooms where the air still carried the shape of someone else’s breath. behind each door, a story half-eaten by time. a bed still warm. a clock with hands that refused to move. a mirror where my reflection was just a little off.

some doors led to cities that had never heard my name. i walked through streets paved with things i tried to forget. ex-lovers with unfamiliar faces. childhood homes missing their windows, their light. my mother, but younger than me, looking through me like glass.

some doors led nowhere. just a long hallway lined with more doors, and i would open each one hoping, maybe this is it. maybe this is the way out.

but there was no out. only in.

the benefits? sure. i never went hungry. never had to beg or break or borrow. a roof, always. a place to rest my head, even if the pillow smelled like someone else’s hair.

but i lost things, too. time. names. the shape of my own want.

i met another key bearer once. he was older, tired in a way that settled into his bones. i asked him, do you know where it ends?

he laughed like i had told a cruel joke. it doesn’t. but one day you’ll drop the key, and someone else will pick it up. and you’ll pray they don’t look back.

that night, i dreamed of a door i couldn’t open. no lock, no handle, just smooth wood and silence. i woke up crying, the key heavy in my hand.

i. words of affirmation

you say i love you but what i hear is i am leaving soon. you call me beautiful but what i hear is for now. i have learned to translate softness into expiration dates, compliments into countdowns. there is a window in my chest that only lets light in when it’s cloudy. i write down every good thing you say, just in case i need proof later that i was something more than tolerated. but words are fickle. words are just sounds dressed up to look permanent. i watch them peel off the walls.

ii. acts of service

once, when i was seven, my mother cut the crust off my sandwich & i thought: this is love. years later, someone hands me a glass of water & i think: is this love? my hands shake too much to carry tenderness, so i leave it in small places—fold your laundry, fix the crooked frame on your wall, hold the door open. i have learned that love is best spoken through verbs. if i do enough, will you stay? if i make the world easier for you to carry, will you make room for me in it?

iii. receiving gifts

i collect things that do not belong to me—bus tickets, hotel keys, a t-shirt you forgot at my place. love is proof of existence, & i need proof of you. i give you a book & tell you to think of me when you read it. you give me a bracelet & i pretend it isn’t a handcuff. people leave, but things stay. things are what haunt you when the person is gone. i wrap my hands around a coffee mug you once held & pretend i’m holding you instead.

iv. quality time

sit with me in the silence. let’s fill this room with nothing & call it something. let’s stretch the night until it forgets to become morning. i measure love in hours, in the spaces between sentences, in the weight of your body on the other side of the couch. stay a little longer. stay until the clock forgets its job. stay until my ribs unlearn the shape of loneliness.

v. physical touch

i have a bruise on my knee & i press it just to feel something. i press it & think of your hands. love has always been something i could only understand with my skin—forehead kisses, fingers tracing words on my arm, the way you pull me closer in your sleep. touch is the first language we learn & maybe the only one that really means anything. i want to be held like an apology, like a prayer, like a memory you don’t want to lose.

i say i love you but what i mean is: tell me this isn’t temporary. show me. hold me. stay.

the trees are watching. they have mouths but no teeth, waiting for you to soften. their arms are thin, breakable, but they don’t need strength. only patience. only time.

you walk because the path is there. because forward is better than back, even if both lead nowhere. the red is climbing your ankles, wrapping around your calves like a gentle hand. like a wound that doesn’t close.

somewhere, a voice: come home.

but you don’t know where that is. if it ever was.

the air is thick, heavy, pressing down on your lungs like a hand over a mouth. like a mother pressing a child into sleep. the trees lean in, closer now. they whisper, petals brushing your face.

stay.

your hands are shaking. you don’t know if it’s fear or something worse—acceptance, maybe.

because the red is here. it has always been here. waiting for you to sit down, close your eyes. let it cover you, like a blanket, like a lover, like a mouth swallowing the last word.

i. shanghai, 3:42 a.m. the boy on the rooftop has a cigarette between his fingers, but he doesn’t smoke. he just likes the way it burns down to the filter, slow and ruinous, the way everything else in his life is, except faster. the moon hangs above him, fat and bright, like it knows something he doesn’t. he remembers learning once that it’s just a rock catching sunlight, a thief of brightness, not its own. he wonders if people can be like that, too. wonders if he is. below him, the city hums, machines and neon and voices slurring together like a drunk man’s prayer. he looks up again and exhales—no smoke, just breath. the moon doesn’t blink. liar.

ii. istanbul, 8:42 p.m. the woman stands by the bosphorus, a cheap beer sweating in her hand. she watches the moon spill its reflection over the water, a silver wound stretching across the waves. she thinks about how he used to say her eyes were like that—“moonstruck,” he had called them, right before leaving. she doesn’t believe in omens, but she hasn’t looked in a mirror since. the water moves, restless. the city behind her is alive, but she feels like a ghost. she takes a sip of beer. it tastes like nothing. the moon stays, patient, watching. liar.

iii. buenos aires, 3:42 p.m. the old man sits on a bench, the afternoon heat sticking to his skin. the moon is visible, pale against the sky, as if it’s lost. his wife used to say that meant bad luck, but he doesn’t believe in that. luck is a myth, just like god, just like the idea that love lasts. he wipes sweat from his brow, watches children chase pigeons across the plaza. the moon is there even in daylight, pretending it belongs. he understands that. some things stay even when they shouldn’t. liar.

and yet—

they all keep looking.

the first time i step into the ocean i do it wrong.

too fast. too eager. the waves slam into my shins like hands that want me to stay, like hands that want me to drown. i think, maybe this is why they tell us never to come here. maybe this is why they say the ocean is a mouth that never stops chewing.

but the thing is, i have never been wanted before, and i have never been held. so i let it.

i walk deeper. the water pulls at my ribs like it wants to unbutton me. every part of me loosens. the air feels farther away, and i do not mind.

they said there were monsters here, but i think they meant me.

i think about my mother, who told me the ocean would swallow me whole. she said this like a warning. she said this like she did not understand that some things are meant to be eaten.

i let go.

the waves curl over my head like a second sky, darker, closer. salt fills my mouth, my nose, my lungs. it tastes like the end of something. it tastes like home.

the uniform is the same for everyone. gray, stiff, a collar too tight against the throat, pants that never quite fit right. polyester breathing like plastic skin. a joke of fabric. a bad dream someone else designed. but if you fold the cuffs just so, if you let the sleeves hang loose like dead weight, if you wear the tie wrong—too long, too short, knotted like a noose or not at all—then maybe it becomes something else. maybe it becomes yours.

some days, i button everything up, straighten the tie, tuck in the shirt. pretend the neatness will hold me together. it never does. it just makes it easier for people to look at me without really seeing.

other days, i let the whole thing fall apart. untucked, collar open, sleeves rolled up like i’m ready to fight something, though i don’t know what. maybe the wind. maybe myself.

i keep the shoes scuffed. dirt pressed into the leather like a fingerprint. proof that i exist. that i walk through this world and it does not walk through me.

the jacket is stolen. or borrowed. or maybe just lost, but i found it first. it’s too big, the sleeves swallowing my hands. but it’s good for disappearing. when i wear it, i am a shadow with buttons. a ghost with a schedule to keep.

someone once told me i wear my uniform like i don’t care. but that’s not true. i care too much. i care so much i have to ruin it a little, break it in like a bad habit. if i wore it the way they wanted, i think i’d vanish completely.

and some days, that doesn’t sound so bad.

the car comes slow. headlights like tired eyes, half-shut, flickering between sleep and obligation. the bridge is long enough to measure a lifetime but short enough to regret every step taken onto it. the man stands where the road stops making sense, where the metal bones of the bridge hum under the weight of things that never arrived.

he lights a cigarette. he doesn’t smoke. but there’s something about holding fire between your fingers that makes you feel less alone.

the driver doesn’t know why he’s here, only that the road told him to be. the wheels moved, the bridge appeared, the man was waiting. or maybe he was left behind.

it started snowing five minutes ago.

it never snows anymore.

the man exhales smoke. the driver exhales silence.

the car rolls closer, like an animal unsure if it should attack or run. the man doesn’t move. he’s been waiting for this.

not for the car. not for the driver. but for the moment when something, anything, finally reaches him.

the bridge groans.

the snow keeps falling.

the car keeps coming.

the man doesn’t step aside.

i wake up with my teeth in my hands. the dream still wet on my skin. in it, i was a child again, small enough to fit in the space between my mother’s voice and the slammed door. i keep dreaming about houses i can’t leave. i keep dreaming about leaving.

the past isn’t behind me. it’s a room i forgot to lock. i walk backwards into my own shadow, try to wear it like a coat. someone told me once that reversing a film makes everything look like healing. the car crash unbreaks itself. the blood walks home. the father becomes gentle.

but the body still remembers. the body, stupid and loyal, carries its ghosts in the ribcage like a second set of lungs. i exhale & hear my own voice from five years ago, muffled, like it’s been underwater all this time.

you ever try to run from something & realize your feet won’t listen? they only know the way back.

somewhere in another universe, i am still there. in that house. in that year. the calendar stuck on a month i never turned. my mother still humming in the kitchen. my father still raising his voice into a fist. the walls still watching, still learning the shape of silence.

& here i am, years away & still walking in reverse. unburying things. unburning. unspeaking.

but tell me, what’s the point of leaving if i was never allowed to forget?

on his days off, the reaper goes to the grocery store and stands in front of the peaches for too long. watches the fluorescent light shiver against their skin, picks one up, puts it back. he doesn’t eat. doesn’t need to. but sometimes he wishes he could.

he takes the long way home, through the park, past the playground where a child stares at him too long, then cries. their mother pulls them close, whispers something like a prayer. he keeps walking.

at home, the apartment smells like dust. there are no windows, but the wind still gets in. he kicks off his boots, sits on the couch, turns on the tv—static. always static. sometimes he wonders if there’s another him, in another place, who gets sitcom reruns and late-night infomercials instead.

he tries to sleep. his bed is a suggestion, a shape in the dark. he lays down anyway. he dreams, sometimes. not of people, not of the ones he’s taken. just colors. red, blue, gold. peach.

in the morning, he gets up, puts his boots back on. the scythe is waiting by the door, patient. another day, another dozen names. the world does not stop dying just because he is tired.

I know every detail about every version of herself she has ever been.

I know the 6-year-old version who swallowed her name like a marble, who sat in the back of classrooms with her knees drawn up, thinking if she held herself small enough, still enough, maybe they wouldn’t see her. I know the 9-year-old who didn’t believe in God but prayed anyway, who thought love was what happened when someone stayed, even when she cried too hard at the wrong times.

There’s the 13-year-old who tried on other people’s laughter like clothes that didn’t fit, her tongue sharp and aching in the mirror. And the 15-year-old who learned silence like a second language, fluent in walking home in the rain without saying a word about it.

I know her, and I know her ghost. She’s always dying in my chest. Every version of her burns quietly in the back of my throat—ashes, whispers, a girl with her fingers pressed to the edges of the world, trying to keep it from crumbling.

She’s a thousand heartbreaks in one. She’s the night you stay up too late and every hour feels like a wound. She’s the cigarette you don’t finish, the voicemail you don’t delete.

I know her at 16, staring at her reflection, trying to scrape something real out of the blur. And at 18, standing at the edge of her future with fists full of past selves, wondering which ones to keep, which ones to let go.

She is every version of a mistake. Every version of a girl who thought she was too much, too little, not enough. She is the paper cut you don’t notice until it stings.

I know her, and I love her like an apology. Like a grief so big it has to become something else. She’s not here anymore, but she’s everywhere I look. She’s every shadow and every shard, every broken piece of a mirror that never quite showed her face the way she hoped it would.

And still, she’s the only one who’s ever understood me.