MargenYou close the door and the house lets out the breath it was holding. Its shift begins.
The fridge seizes the chance to complain. The parquet cracks its old bones. The tap releases the drop it had been holding in for an hour out of politeness.
The light crosses the hallway slowly, from the kitchen to the bedroom, touching your things one by one like a nurse taking the roll: the open book, the cup, the jumper still wearing your shape.
No one knows what houses do alone. I think they rehearse our absence. That they practise, quietly, for the day we don't come back, and that's why when you walk in suddenly everything is so still, so busy pretending, so happy.