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?