You still dream of it.
The hallway light that flickered,
the creak in the third stair,
the way the door clicked shut like a heartbeat.

You didn’t realize how much you memorized it
until it was no longer yours.

Now you walk through dreams
with keys that don’t fit anymore.
You reach for doorknobs that no longer exist.

They say you can always go home.
But what if home was sold?
Condemned?
Ripped away in a storm, a notice, a final box?

What if home is a memory
you can’t afford to visit anymore?

You try to explain it—
the grief of a place.
But people don’t always understand.
They think of home as walls.
You knew it as safety.
As history.
As the place where your laughter lived.

You miss the way your footsteps sounded there.
The weight of the front door in your hand.
The smell after rain.
The corner of the living room where you once cried
and felt held by the walls themselves.

And now?
Now you’re somewhere else.
And it’s not bad,
but it’s not home.

It doesn’t speak your name the same way.
It doesn’t know your story.
It hasn’t watched you grow and grieve and try again.

You keep dreaming of that old address,
because part of you still lives there.

Even if the mail doesn’t.