Four Beds

There are four beds.

I count them because the room insists.

Iron ribs flaking into powder,

white once, now the color of weather.

They hold nothing

but the indentation of small lives

that practiced sleep here.

---

The walls are yellow,

not warm, not bright,

yellow like nicotine fingers,

like old report cards folded and forgotten.

Paint splits in long, dry mouths,

opening but never speaking.

---

Four windows.

Light enters thin and surgical.

Outside, bare trees stand close to the glass,

scratching without sound,

excellent at not intervening.

---

On the first mattress

the center dips inward,

a held breath that never finished leaving.

I press my palm there.

It answers.

Memory, it turns out, has weight.

The beds are narrow.

Short.

With rails so a body does not roll out.

My son Zim would have fit here.

He would not fit here now.

---

On the second bed

a brown bloom stiffens the sheet.

Not dramatic.

Settled into cotton

the way memory settles into bone.

I do not ask what it is.

It has already decided.

---

The third frame lists slightly,

one leg shorter than the others.

It remembers uneven weight.

The fourth bed is the cleanest.

That is the worst part.

---

Dust does not drift.

It settles with intention,

learning the geometry of rails,

claiming the hollows where knees pressed.

It gathers in corners

like children told to be quiet.

The floorboards answer when stepped on.

A small wooden cry.

I whisper sorry,

which feels foolish,

but the room allows it.

There were fevers here.

Wet cloths wrung out again.

Names repeated into the dark

until they lost meaning

and became sound.

Laughter flattened under blankets.

Breathing that braided itself together.

---

I am standing in it now,

this room that keeps its mouth shut.

I keep waiting for it to accuse me.

Instead it offers only air.

Thin.

Used.

Retired from its former work.

If you stay long enough

you begin to hear it.

Not ghosts.

Not screaming.

Just the rhythm of breath

that once overlapped,

that learned how to make room,

and stopped

without asking.

Some rooms never empty.