The Familiar Room (Poem)

The room was cold, the walls were bare,

But something breathed beneath the air.

A shadow moved where none should be,

And every night, it whispered to me.

The wallpaper, a ghostly skin,

Concealed the fire that lived within.

A name I carved with trembling hand,

In ash, in guilt, in burning sand.

I dreamed of screams I never knew,

Of boiling pots and blackened view.

Yet in those flames, a truth took form—

I've died here once. I’ll die once more.

Time forgets, but sins do not.

The soul replays what we forgot.

And though I wear another face,

The fire knows.

It knows this place.