I know who I am

My hair smells like rainwater
trapped in old copper pipes—
something left behind
but still carrying the taste of metal.

I wear it short, not out of habit
but to keep the years from unspooling—
the borrowed house,
the moonlit porcelain nobody disturbs,
the lace curtains unraveling like loosened thread.

Girls like me grow up learning
to distill absence into something smaller—
a locket, a clenched fist,
the names of people
who should have sent letters
but let silence answer instead.

Nobody taught me
how to reach beyond the frame—
only how to archive.
To fold dresses into suitcases
as if preserving fossils,
to run my fingers along the fractured walls
And call for maintenance, not marvel at the erosion.

Some say I walk through the world
like I authored it.

But I know how I am–

I move like someone
who was given a house with no deed
but still carries the keys
under her tongue.

I know what I am.

I am the girl who arrived too late
to inherit the walls
but just in time to inherit
the hush between them—
the cabinet swollen shut with authority,
the dust accommodating itself into curtains
no hands have parted in years.

Some nights, I pry the cabinet’s jaw
with a spoon bent from my ambition,
find only the ghost of a butterfly
curled like a dried chrysalis.

I crush it between my palms,
let it dissolve into the silence—
another relic to braid
into the missing parts
of the memories I’ve learned to keep.

Today, I wear my hair longer than before—
A nod to the time spend toiling in this house

I let it hold the wind without apology.

Most mornings, I sit in the patio armchair

with coffee warm between my palms,

watching the sun peel back the hush of the curtains,

light crawling over the stony walls.

I know who I am.

I am the girl who wrestled the stones and made them mine—

no deed, but the walls await my sighs.

I walk its rooms like a name spoken aloud.

They call me the owner,

and I do not correct them.