My grandmother always told me

life is a room with no windows—

just you, a flickering lamp,

and the sound of your own breath

turning into static.

She said this while slicing apples,

her knife biting the skin so clean

it made me wonder

if the fruit ever knew pain.

I asked her once, "What happens if I open the door?"

She looked at me like I was a shadow

she’d forgotten to turn off.

"Don’t," she said.

"Out there, it’s worse."

I think about this now, years later—

how she folded herself into the wallpaper,

how her hands trembled like moth wings

but never dropped the knife.

The door in my chest keeps rattling.

It wants to be opened.

Wants me to step out

into a world where everyone’s hands

are stained with the ink of letters

they were too afraid to send.

My grandmother is gone,

and the apples have all rotted,

and I still can’t tell if the room

is safer than the silence outside it.

I dream of her sometimes—

the lamp flickering, her shadow stretching

longer than her body ever did.

“Stay here,” she says,

but the door doesn’t stop.

It never stops.

And I am so tired

of trying to hold it shut.