Young Writers Society

there's a dream i have
where my younger brother visits me in my room,
past his bedtime, when i've already said goodnight to him.
i don't have him. i've never had him.
he perches on the edge of the mattress like he's going to leave me again.
he didn't leave. he's never existed anywhere at all.

i don't know what his face looks like
(i don't know what he looks like at all)
when he asks, where does the house end and the haunting start?

i'm not going to tell him that they're one and the same,
that i am replaying my own night runs over the floorboards
that i made when i was his age,
becoming my own ghost wandering my old trails.
the house relives its memories, fractures expanding in after-sunset creaks,
trauma pressed into its hallways by my footsteps,
and i feel guilty, because neither of us will outrun it. we remember
what we see. we saw our demise and decay here
as certain as this house will someday rot,
and we sprint towards it night after night again,
cutting time off our race against ourselves—

we remember the finish line in the black-and-white checkered tiles
of a kitchen that's since been remodeled. we remember
what theseus does too, osmosis memory leaking
into the foundation. are we not watching the harm repeat,
trying to understand what happened in these walls that we deserved it?
is the house itself not watching right alongside us?

there's a dream i have where my brother squeezes my hand.
i've never felt it, but the lines of his palm
take after someone who i know looks up to me.

i don't think it's like that, i'll say instead,
drawing up a new dream face to say my words to. i think the healing starts
where the haunting ends, when we take a different path at our own pace,
when we don't care what room we end up in
because it will all feel like home. the house is just the layout,
the walls we're used to walking around. it's seen some awful things too,
but maybe it'll rebuild itself as we rebuild ourselves. this haunting is mutual,
this healing is requited, step by floorboard and floorboard by step.

i speak for the other one to hear,
but only this ghost hears my words
and i can never remember what i said when i wake up.

i don't remember which one of us lets go,
but i know my hand falls empty,
and it doesn't quite feel like i lost the real thing.