The home is cold. The wood creaks beneath your feet, smooth oak worn rough, splintering into shoes too thick for it. The carpet is gone–the flushed, plush fiber–no longer thick enough for your feet to plunge into. Your shoes stay at the top, the nylon too dirtied to spread. The floor is too full of memories and grime and mistrust that it has no room left. The strands don’t spread, they stay firm, moving downward, not apart. It creaks. You sink.
You land on the stairs. Fist over knee, you steady, taking a deep, smooth breath. It catches, and you cough, a fit of dust and and cobweb too large for your lungs. The studs are damaged, black stains of the weathered years along the expanse of pale wood. The floors are cement, unable to push you away, taking your footfalls whether it desires it or not. You search, wondering if the ceilings were always that low, searching for something left. Something untouched, unchanged, still standing despite the years.
Beneath the stairs, amongst spun webs and dusted floors, there is a drawing. A line, another shakier one, and a curved one, as curved as the grain of wood. You mirror it, hesitant, and touch it. It stays, permanent, etched into the cement wall. A nook, still firm, as small as those moments were. The floor is colder than it was, your feet are larger, your hands rougher, but the mouth is still as rocky as it was made.
It is cozy, despite the frigid filth. You are shivering, speckled with the dirt of the years, and trace the symbols all the same.
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