((link)): Vertical Cracks

You could have left. You should have. But the cracks had become your geography. You traced them in the dark like Braille, reading a story written in reverse: not what the house was becoming, but what it had always been. A vessel. A wound. A door that only opens inward.

That night, you dreamed of the house before you were born. An empty lot. A single tree. A woman in a long coat digging a trench with her bare hands. She wasn’t burying anything. She was opening something. When she turned to look at you, her face was your mother’s, then yours, then a face you would wear in twenty years—older, wearier, with vertical lines etched beside your mouth like parentheses holding a secret too heavy to speak. vertical cracks

Not in the wall.

The second crack appeared in the hallway mirror’s reflection. No, not in the mirror—behind the glass, splitting the silver backing into two distinct worlds. On one side, your face, tired but familiar. On the other, a version of you that hadn’t slept in years, eyes hollow as wells. You turned around. The real wall was smooth. But the crack in the reflection stayed. You could have left

You named it settling. You named it seasonal change. You named it anything but what it was. You traced them in the dark like Braille,

On the last day, you stood before the master bedroom crack. It was wide enough now to step through, though there was no light on the other side. Only a draft. Not cold. Not warm. The temperature of your own blood just beneath the skin.