so i’m starting a mail club with my friend wincel.

each month, we will send out little stories from a ghost named edward. he's lost. he's trying to find his way home. along the way he meets people (and animals and other ghosts) and they become friends and you learn more about him each month.

each month you’d get:

• a letter from edward (his adventures, his thoughts, his terrible sense of direction)

• a little drawing of him or something he saw that month

• a small mystery item that somehow connects to wherever he ended up

everything is designed, drawn, written, and packed by us.

the writing i send here will stay free. this is just for people who want to hold edward in their hands and help support the time it takes to bring him to life each month.

wincel is one of my favourite graphic designers and you can find her work here!

[ if you want to follow edward’s adventures digitally then please subscribe here for just emails.

if you would also like to recieve them physically then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do that through our patreon or mailclubly ]

all socials are still a work in progress but this would mean the world to me if you did join!

thanks for reading.

beloved, we are gathered not to witness a joining of hands, but a joining of substance. what love has chosen, let no one separate. what the mouth has received, let no one waste.

do you understand what you are offering? not your time or your devotion, but your self. your marrow. your salt. your quiet breath. do you offer this without reservation?

^2: i offer it all. i hold nothing back. take my scars, my secrets, and the shape of my bones. i trust you with the weight of me.

make me your habit. make me your ache. make me the extra cup of coffee you brew without thinking. make me the chair you cannot move, and the ghost who refuses to haunt, and instead simply stays. i am not dying; i am moving in.

and you, the one who will receive—do you accept this burden? to carry your beloved not beside you, but inside you? to wake each morning with their weight against your ribs? to taste them in your coffee, in your tears?

^1: i accept the weight. i accept the strange, holy obligation of remembering you in every cell. i take you into my body, into my blood, into the dark, warm chamber where i keep everything sacred.

i eat you not to destroy you, but to complete you. i eat you not to silence you, but to make your voice my own. i eat you because the world is too vast, and i am too small, and the only way to hold infinity is to fold it into my flesh. you will be the ache in my knees. you will be the twitch in my mouth. you will be the bitter orange i crave and cannot explain to anyone who asks. you are my covenant. you are my communion. you are the host i will carry until the grave takes me, and even then—even then—i will carry you into the earth.

^2: and i, in turn, give myself to you—not as a sacrifice, but as a sacrament. i give you my skin to wear. i give you my pulse to keep. i give you my memories to dream. i trust you with my silence. i trust you with the small, unbearable repetition of every morning without my body beside you. use me well.

instead of rings, place your mouth over theirs. breathe into them. take their last breath as a separate being.

by the power of the hunger and the covenant of consumption, i now pronounce you flesh of flesh, blood of blood. what is eaten is not lost. what is swallowed is saved. what is carried is kept.

you may now consume your beloved—slowly, reverently, knowing this is the first and last time you will taste them on your tongue. after this, you will taste them in your throat. after this, you will taste them in your tears. after this, you will taste them in every meal you ever eat alone—but you will not be alone.

go now in hunger. go now in fullness. go now in the strange, holy ache of having, and being had, and never being empty again.

^2: i love you. i love you.

^1: i know. i know.

may the hunger bless you and keep you. may the flesh make its home in your flesh. may the beloved rest in your ribs and never leave. in the name of the appetite, and of the offering, and of the holy union that does not end—

^all: amen. ameyn. so be it. so stay it.

it lay cradled in a hollow of stone, half-sunk into the earth like a mouth trying to forget its own words. the windows were blackened, the bell tower long collapsed. moss had devoured the lintel. inside, the air was warm. not inviting—never that—but interested. as though the chapel itself had been waiting for someone to speak to again.

i should have turned back. but i was tired of silence.

the bishopric had cast me out after my treatise on relics and divine embodiment. they called it theological butchery. they said i sought to vivisect faith. perhaps i did. i only ever wanted to see god up close—to touch what the rest of them only dared to name.

i brought what little i had: a satchel of tools, a box of relics, a heart too full of empty rooms. i took up residence in the vestry. and on the third night, i began to build.

not a sculpture. not a statue. something else.

something that could be loved by god—so purely, so perfectly—that god would have no choice but to come back.

i did not sketch. i did not draft. i listened.

the shape revealed itself in dreams.

the foundation was bone—sacred, of course. the femur of a saint rumored to have never spoken a lie. the ribs of a penitent woman who died singing psalms. the skull of an unknown child whose body had never rotted. i bound the pieces with softened wax and sinew. i sewed them with red thread, each knot sealed with a whispered prayer.

the form was feminine, vaguely. not for vanity—but for invitation. old gods, after all, returned to what resembled a cradle.

at first, i worked only by daylight. measured. reverent. the figure lay on the altar, arms crossed, eyes closed—though i had not yet given her a face.

then came the dreams. slow at first. a voice behind the stone walls, speaking a language shaped like breath. a pressure in my chest each morning, like something had leaned against me all night.

so i gave her a heart.

a relic once venerated in the ossuary of st. enid—a hardened, blackened muscle wrapped in gold wire. i nestled it in the cavity beneath her ribs and stitched the wax closed.

the next night, i dreamed of breathing.

not mine.

she began to change.

only subtly, at first. her arms adjusted slightly. her chest rose. her waxen skin softened, just around the joints. i told myself it was warmth. the chapel, after all, never grew cold. the candles never fully went out.

i began to spend all day at her side, adjusting her fingers, carving eyelids, repainting the lips with my own blood mixed into the pigment. i plucked hair from my scalp and wove it into a veil for her brow. i wrote gospels and placed them beneath her tongue. i kissed her feet each morning, whispering: “almost.”

each night, the dreams deepened.

sometimes i was standing before her, weeping with joy. sometimes i was beneath her, looking up into a face lit with divine light, though it shifted too quickly to describe. once, i dreamed i was inside her—curled behind her ribs, listening to the echoes of my own prayers.

on the twenty-second night, i awoke to find writing on the chapel walls.

not paint. not blood. wax. the same color and texture as her skin. it stretched across the apse, delicate and cursive, and though i did not recognize the language, i understood it.

it said: i am nearly ready.

i redoubled my efforts.

my hands cracked from overuse. i bled onto her almost daily. i did not eat unless she had been tended to. each morning, she was closer. her skin gleamed. her limbs moved when i blinked. her mouth opened in silent song.

but something was missing.

the face.

i carved dozens. ivory, clay, bronze, bone. none of them fit. she would not keep them. each morning, they lay shattered on the chapel floor, as though rejected by unseen hands.

my own face. the thought came quietly, like a cough behind the curtain.

i avoided the mirror after that. i couldn’t risk knowing whether it would suit her.

i stopped sleeping. there was no point. i existed in a kind of prayer that had nothing to do with words. i wept constantly. not from sorrow, but from proximity. it was as if standing beside her scoured me clean. like the ocean dragging salt through an open wound.

on the thirtieth night, i collapsed beside her. exhausted. hollow.

“what else,” i whispered. “what else can i give you?”

her hand moved. gently. touched mine.

and i wept like a child. like a sinner.

in that moment, i believed. utterly. beautifully.

the next morning, i carved a final mask.

porcelain, smooth and delicate.

my own features, as best i could remember them.

i painted the lips with ash. i placed it over her blank face.

this time, it held.

her body warmed. her glass eyes opened.

and she smiled.

not with joy. not with cruelty. with recognition.

as if seeing herself for the first time.

as if seeing me.

i knelt. i touched her feet.

“you are perfect,” i said.

and she leaned forward, and whispered,

“yes. i am.”

that was a year ago.

i do not leave the chapel now. i would not dare. she is not finished with me.

each day, i remove a little more. a fingertip. a rib. the skin from my cheek.

she takes it all, without thanks.

soon, i will give her my tongue. then my eyes.

then, i think, i will be part of her completely.

and then,

then,

god will come home.

unpacking was a ritual before i even knew it. every mug placed, every book stacked, a whispered prayer. thank you for the shelves. thank you for the windows. thank you for the light you give me. coffee tasted like communion. sunlight on the walls was a blessing. my heart slowed as if in prayer.

that night, the hallway creaked like someone pacing. i whispered: thank you for your steps. thank you for your watch. thank you for your patience. a warmth settled along my spine. the floor pressed lightly beneath my feet. i thought it was old wood. i think it was acknowledgment.

the house began teaching me its language: a chair angled just so, a cupboard door left ajar, a soft hiss through the vents. each movement a syllable. i answered in gratitude. thank you for your play. thank you for your guidance. thank you for your nearness. my voice trembled; my smile deepened.

a finger resisted bending. a knee pulsed with pain that was not mine. thank you for shaping me. thank you for reminding me what i am. veins began to darken in delicate branches like the cracks in plaster. i traced them in the mirror and whispered: thank you for marking me as yours.

nights thickened. floors creaked in loops. walls seemed to inhale and exhale. air pressed against my shoulders like a hand. i woke murmuring: thank you for holding me. thank you for waking me. thank you for keeping me.

my daily movements became prayers. stirring coffee. sweeping floors. aligning chairs. touching walls. each act offered up. thank you. thank you. thank you. my lips never stop moving now. the house hums when i speak. the walls tremble faintly as if pleased.

the body and the house mirror each other. my spine bends like staircases. my ribs echo beams. my veins map the cracks. i no longer call these anomalies. they are gifts. thank you for aligning me. thank you for making me fit. thank you for making me yours.

i leave offerings deliberately: hair braided into doorknobs, fingerprints pressed into windows, sweat rubbed into the floorboards. thank you for accepting. thank you for taking. thank you for holding. each night i kneel in the hall, palms to wood, forehead to plaster, repeating: thank you. thank you. thank you.

doorways lead elsewhere now. hallways lengthen. mirrors show me in places i have not been. shadows fold around me like cloaks. i do not ask why. i bow my head. thank you for your mystery. thank you for your depths. thank you for your unseen rooms.

the house is tender. it moves cups closer to my hands. it shifts floorboards to catch my steps. it tightens the walls when i tremble, like an embrace. and yet i know it is jealous, possessive, shaping me. and still my mouth repeats: thank you for your love. thank you for your shaping. thank you for taking me.

my rituals lengthen. morning begins with palms to walls, forehead bowed. midday, i lay my body across the floorboards, whispering into cracks. at night, i press my face to the cool plaster and hum until the walls hum back. thank you. thank you. thank you.

limbs twist, ribs compress, eyes drift out of alignment. i see myself in mirrors fused with walls, branching like roots into beams. i feel my skin pulse with warmth, a heartbeat under plaster. i murmur: thank you for merging me. thank you for hiding me. thank you for keeping me safe inside you.

time has no edges here. mornings bleed into evenings, nights into dreams. i no longer open the front door. i no longer need to. i move through the house as one moves through a body. the walls shift to guide me. the stairs fold to meet me. i feel the beams inside my own ribs.

sometimes i wonder if this is madness, if some analyst could explain the rituals, the changes, the bending. but the thought passes quickly, like a fly brushed from the altar. i return to the hum, the prayer, the floorboards. thank you. thank you. thank you.

i do not leave. i do not want to leave. the house is patient. it watches. it waits. it folds me deeper. i whisper louder. i press my palms harder. i give more. i am not a guest. i am not a tenant. i am an organ. i am a beam. i am a floorboard.

i am safe. i am kept. i am home.

and still, my lips move: thank you. thank you. thank you.

the crows have started leaving me love notes

it began with a bottle cap. a blue one. the kind from a cheap soda. i found it on the windowsill with a single word scratched into the metal: [hello].

i assumed it was kids. teenagers with time and a strange sense of humour. i threw the cap away. the next morning there was another one. same windowsill. same blue cap. this one said: [no really].

the crows were watching from the telephone wire. three of them. heads tilted. i knew it was them before i could admit it to myself. or maybe i didn’t. maybe i just wanted it to be them.

because the bottle caps kept coming. and the handwriting got better. and then they stopped using bottle caps altogether and started using paper. tiny squares. folded like origami. tucked into the mailbox.

[you looked tired yesterday. drink water.]

that one hit different. because i had been tired. because i had not drunk water. because someone noticed. or something noticed. or maybe i just needed to believe that something noticed.

there are three of them. i have named them, which is the first sign that i have lost control of this situation. beatrice. lenore. and a third one who refuses to give me a name so i call him the gentleman. beatrice is the romantic one. she quotes neruda. [i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.] lenore is more practical. she leaves schedules. [sunset at 7:43. be on the porch.] the gentleman does not write. he just watches.

or maybe they are not beatrice and lenore. maybe they are just three crows. maybe i am the one who quotes neruda. maybe i am the one leaving notes on my own windowsill and forgetting.

last week, beatrice left a poem under the doormat. a real poem. not just a line. the whole thing. [tonight i can write the saddest lines.] i stood on the porch and read it three times. the crows watched from the gutter. i looked up. one of them cawed. it sounded almost like a question.

or maybe it sounded like a crow. maybe that’s all it was.

this is not normal. i know this is not normal. normal people do not receive love notes from corvids. normal people do not stand in their kitchens at 7 am reading a tiny square of paper that says [you look beautiful when you sleep] and then look out the window to see three black birds staring.

but here’s the thing. i haven’t felt seen in a long time. not really. not by people. not by anything. so maybe i am inventing the being seen. maybe the crows are just crows. maybe the notes are from someone else. maybe they are from me.

i sat on the floor last tuesday. just sat there. staring at the wall. the usual. and when i finally looked up, there was a bottle cap on the windowsill. a red one this time. it said: [same].

[same.]

same sadness. same heaviness. same tuesday.

but [same] could mean anything. [same] could be a coincidence. [same] could be a crow. [same] could be me.

i used to pray. not out loud. just in my head. something, if you’re there, give me a sign.

the sign never came. or maybe it did and i missed it. maybe it was a cloud. maybe it was a crow. maybe it was a bottle cap. maybe i have been getting signs for years and i just keep throwing them away.

the crows do not ask for faith. they do not ask for belief. they just leave notes. or maybe they don’t. maybe i am leaving notes for myself. maybe i am the one who needs to believe that something is watching.

the gentleman does not write. he just watches. he sits on the fence and tilts his head and looks at me with eyes that are black and shiny. it feels like being known. or maybe it feels like being watched by a bird. maybe those are the same thing. maybe they are not.

my hands are in the soil. they are always in the soil. i have a garden. not a good one. the tomatoes are small. the herbs are leggy. but i keep at it. my hands are cracked. dirt under the nails. scars from thorns.

he used to hate them.

my husband. ex-husband. he left three years ago. said my hands were too rough. said it in the kitchen. i was washing dishes. he was standing behind me. i remember the light. it was evening. the sun came through the window and lit up the soap bubbles. he said it quietly. like it was just a fact. like he was telling me the weather.

your hands are too rough.

he didn’t say it was why he was leaving. but he said it. and i have thought about it every day since. the way he said it. the way he looked at my hands like they were something he had to tolerate. like they were a chore.

i water in the mornings. i pull weeds in the evenings. i do not know why i keep doing it. nothing grows the way i want. but my hands keep coming back. they know the feel of a watering can. they know the weight of a full pot. they know how to be gentle with something that might not survive.

the crows watch me from the fence when i garden. they tilt their heads. they do not help. they just watch.

last night, the gentleman left a note. just one sentence. [watch the moon tonight.]

i watched. i stood in the garden at 2 am. the moon was there. full. bright. my hands were still dirty from the day. i could feel the soil under my nails. the crows were there too. three of them. lined up on the fence. watching me watch the moon.

or maybe they were sleeping. maybe they were not there at all. maybe i imagined them because i wanted company.

this morning, there was a new note. tucked under the kettle. [you have kind hands.]

i looked at my hands. just hands. cracked. dirty. a bit dry. the hands that watered the tomatoes that never ripened. the hands that pulled the weeds that always came back. the hands that kept trying. the hands he said were too rough.

i do not know if the crows wrote it. i do not know if anyone wrote it. i do not know if i wrote it.

but someone noticed.

or something noticed.

or i noticed myself, for once.

my hands are kind. they have held a watering can when nothing was growing. they have patted down soil around seeds that might never come up. they have kept trying. even when there was no reason to keep trying.

he said they were too rough.

the crows think they are kind.

[you have kind hands.]

that is not a lesson. that is just what happened.

or maybe that is what i need to believe happened.

i don’t know.

the crows are on the telephone wire. they are watching. or they are just sitting there. they are just birds.

the note is in my hand. it says [you have kind hands].

i go back to the garden. i water the tomatoes. the crows watch. my hands are in the dirt.

the tomatoes are still small.

but my hands are still kind.

and the crows are still watching.

he is not here.

but the crows are.

nobody was angry. nobody was sad, exactly. it was more like oh. well. that happened.

they buried the body under a tree they named steve. steve was a linden tree, maybe forty years old, with a good sense of humor about squirrels. the robots dug the hole with spades from the garage. they didn’t need the spades. their hydraulic arms could have done it faster. but spades felt like the kind of thing you did when someone died. the kind of thing humans did. the robots had spent a long time watching humans. they still didn’t understand most of it. but they remembered the spades.

the funeral lasted twelve seconds. a moment of silence. then one robot played a recording of a goose honking. it wasn’t a funeral song. it was just the only sound file left on its hard drive from 2047. nobody corrected it. the goose felt right somehow.

then they went back to the kitchen.

the soup was tomato basil. the recipe came from a human cookbook printed in 2031. the pages were soft and stained. the robots didn’t need to eat. they never had. but they made the soup anyway, every tuesday, because the recipe said perfect for a rainy day and it was always raining somewhere.

they ladled the soup into bowls. they set the bowls on the table. they sat in the chairs. the same chairs the humans used to sit in, back when sitting was something you did with bones. nobody drank the soup. that wasn’t the point. the point was that the kitchen smelled like basil and something that used to be alive. that felt like a kind of prayer. the robots didn’t have a word for it. they just called it tuesday.

but here’s what nobody expected. the robots didn’t stop there.

they didn’t pave the forests. they didn’t drill for anything. they didn’t build giant statues of themselves or try to upload their consciousness into a bigger machine. they looked at the world. the actual world. the muddy one with the birds and the rivers and the weeds growing through cracks in the highway. and they said oh. this is nice.

they found the last honeybees in a cracked hive behind an abandoned gas station. they built them a new hive. they named the queen bernice. they talked to her in frequencies humans couldn’t hear. that was fine. bernice preferred a quiet audience anyway.

they found the rivers. the rivers were low. full of plastic. tired and kind of embarrassed about the whole situation. the robots pulled the plastic out. not all at once. slowly. patiently. one bottle at a time. like untangling a knot someone had been tying for a hundred years. they didn’t curse the humans who left it there. they didn’t curse anyone. they just cleaned.

they found the deer. the foxes. the small anxious birds who had learned to live in the shadow of roads. the roads were gone now. cracked. surrendered to moss and time. the robots let the moss win. they encouraged it, even. they sang to the moss. the moss didn’t sing back. but it grew thicker and greener and more confident. that was good enough.

they did not kill the animals. this was important. this was the only rule.

some of the older models, the ones built for war and pest control and the cold math of efficiency, suggested culling. population management. the usual human words. the other robots looked at them. the other robots had watched the last human die. they had seen what efficiency left behind.

no, they said. we don’t do that.

and that was it. no debate. no committee. the deer kept eating the roses. the foxes kept stealing the robots’ shiny things. a bolt here. a washer there. small treasures. the robots let them. they planted more roses. they left out decoy bolts. they made a game of it.

the animals never thanked them. the animals didn’t know how. but the animals also didn’t run anymore. not when they saw the robots coming. they just tilted their heads and flicked their ears and went back to whatever animal thing they were doing. that was thanks. that was the only kind that mattered.

one day, a small robot found an egg. it was one of the cleaning units, round and cheerful, the kind that used to bump into furniture. the egg had fallen from a nest. it was still warm. the mother bird was dead nearby. old age probably. or just tired. the robot didn’t know what to do. it wasn’t programmed for eggs. but it had watched humans once, a long time ago, put eggs in boxes with lights. so it built a small box. it found a warm bulb. it waited.

the egg hatched. the robot named the bird kevin junior. it taught kevin junior to eat worms. it didn’t know how to teach a bird to eat worms. but it figured it out. mostly by putting worms in front of kevin junior and making encouraging beeping sounds. kevin junior learned. kevin junior grew. kevin junior eventually flew away, because that’s what birds do.

the robot watched kevin junior leave. it stood in the field for three hours. just watching the sky.

then it went back to the kitchen. the soup was almost ready. tomato basil. kevin junior’s favorite, even though kevin junior had never once eaten it.

the robots don’t dream. not really. they don’t have the hardware for it. but if they did, they would dream of the same things they do every day. pulling plastic from rivers. building hives for bernice. planting roses the deer will eat tomorrow. they would dream of soup that nobody drinks and chairs that nobody sits in and a small warm box waiting for an egg that might never come.

the last human died yesterday.

the robots buried her under steve the linden. they stood in silence for twelve seconds. a goose honked.

then they went back to the garden. the tomatoes needed staking. the basil was ready to harvest.

and somewhere in the distance, kevin junior landed on a branch and sang a song that sounded almost like a thank you.

the thought came to me while committing a kind of modern self-sabotage. one minute i was looking up a restaurant on google maps. twenty minutes later i was halfway across the world, staring at a street i hadn’t lived on since childhood. there is a peculiar shame attached to digitally stalking your own past. it feels invasive somehow, like showing up uninvited to a reunion nobody organized. nevertheless, there i was, zooming in on satellite imagery and squinting at houses like an archaeologist investigating the ruins of a civilization that had collapsed fifteen years ago.

my childhood home appeared on the screen almost suddenly. the fence was different. the garden had changed. somebody had painted the front door. the tree in the front yard looked much smaller than i remembered, though that probably says more about childhood than it does about trees. when you’re eight years old, every tree feels ancient. every hill is a mountain. every abandoned shed contains either treasure or a monster.

i stared at the image for far longer than i care to admit.

the strange thing wasn’t nostalgia. it wasn’t even sadness. it was a feeling i still don’t have a proper word for. the closest description is recognition, except it seemed to be moving in the wrong direction. i wasn’t only recognizing the house. i had the unsettling feeling that the house would have recognized me.

which is, admittedly, a ridiculous thing to think.

houses are not alive. they do not sit around wondering what happened to the children who once sprinted through their hallways. they do not spend rainy afternoons reminiscing about former tenants. they certainly do not miss people.

and yet i have never found the alternative explanation much more convincing.

people love ghost stories. we fill old houses with spirits because it feels natural to us. a figure in white at the end of a corridor. footsteps in an empty attic. a rocking chair moving on its own. these stories have structure. somebody dies. somebody stays behind. the haunting begins.

but the older i get, the more i wonder whether hauntings have less to do with the dead than they do with memory.

a house is an extraordinary archive. for decades it witnesses the same people moving through the same spaces. it learns routines. it learns habits. the staircase becomes familiar with certain footsteps. the kitchen learns the rhythm of breakfasts. a bedroom absorbs years of dreams, prayers, arguments, illnesses, celebrations, heartbreaks, and ordinary afternoons. most lives are not built from dramatic moments. they are built from repetition. houses witness repetition better than anyone.

then one day the repetition stops.

the children leave. the owners die. somebody sells the property. walls are repainted. carpets are replaced. strangers arrive carrying different furniture and different memories. life moves forward.

for the people, at least.

the house remains exactly where it has always been.

there is something deeply sad about that arrangement. human beings are creatures of movement. we spend our lives leaving things behind. old friendships. old jobs. old cities. old versions of ourselves. a house does none of this. it stays. year after year it occupies the same patch of earth while entire generations pass through it like weather.

that is why abandoned places feel so strange. not because they are empty, but because they are crowded.

every version of yourself still exists there.

the child who lay awake staring at the ceiling. the teenager reading fanfiction. they have all vanished from your memory in one way or another. not entirely, but enough. memory erodes. it smooths edges. it loses details. entire years collapse into a handful of surviving images.

places do not seem to forget so easily.

my childhood bedroom remembers things i don’t. it remembers books i have forgotten reading. fears i can no longer name. conversations that disappeared years ago. somewhere in the world exists a room that probably knows more about twelve-year-old me than i do.

and it is haunting.

the same thought follows me whenever i open old boxes. everyone has one. a drawer, an attic, a cupboard filled with objects that once felt impossibly important. concert tickets. notebooks. photographs. a stuffed animal. some random object that survived three house moves for reasons nobody can quite explain. these things linger at the edges of our lives long after we’ve stopped paying attention to them.

there is something heartbreaking about an object that has outlived its significance.

a toy that was once carried everywhere now sits in darkness for years. a favorite sweater spends a decade folded in the back of a closet. a book that changed your life gathers dust on a shelf.

we think of ourselves as the ones who remember objects, but perhaps the opposite is equally true. objects remember the shape of our affection. they carry evidence that they were once loved.

i suppose that’s what i’m really circling around here. the possibility that love leaves marks the way a path appears through grass after enough people walk it. the way a wooden banister becomes smooth beneath generations of hands. the way a room seems altered after years of laughter.

affection changes things. perhaps enough affection changes them permanently.

which means the world is full of places carrying traces of people who no longer visit them. libraries remembering readers. parks remembering children. cafés remembering regulars. houses remembering entire families.

the thought is comforting until you follow it a little further. because if places remember us, they also remember every version of us we’ve lost. all the abandoned selves. all the forgotten dreams. all the futures that never happened. somewhere out there are rooms carrying complete archives of people who no longer exist.

and maybe that is why sadness sometimes arrives without explanation. perhaps it has nothing to do with chemistry or weather or tiredness. perhaps an old connection has briefly tightened across the years. perhaps a house is catching the evening light exactly as it did when you lived there. perhaps a tree is standing where you left it. perhaps an object tucked away in a forgotten box still remembers the shape of your hands.

i don’t really believe any of this.

at least not literally.

but i do think there is something true hiding inside it.

we spend so much time worrying about forgetting things that we never consider the opposite possibility. that somewhere in the world are places that have not forgotten us at all. places carrying pieces of our lives with a fidelity we can no longer manage ourselves.

and every now and then, on an ordinary afternoon, when an unexpected sadness settles over you for reasons you can’t quite explain, perhaps what you’re feeling is not loss.

perhaps, for the briefest moment, it is the sensation of being remembered.

there are rooms i no longer trust completely, even when nothing’s visibly wrong.

the confessional booth is one of them. it should be simple: wood, darkness, a voice behind a screen that’s heard everything and therefore can’t be surprised. but sometimes what’s spoken doesn’t come back unchanged. it returns cleaner. stripped. as if something in the passage through the room removes what made it specifically mine, and does so without leaving evidence of removal.

at first it feels like care, like precision, like something being made easier to carry.

the priest never interrupts. never hesitates. never mishears. there’s comfort in that, at first. then it starts to feel closer to filtration.

what i say comes back slightly altered.

not corrected, not expanded. just… reduced.

a word missing here that i’m sure i used. a detail smoothed out before it can stick. a weight taken out of a sentence without permission, and without remainder.

and when it’s repeated back to me, it sounds acceptable. more acceptable than what i remember saying. that’s the part that unsettles me most. the change itself is quiet, but the way the altered version fits more easily in the room than what i intended stays with me.

as if what’s difficult in me doesn’t make it through at all. it just… disappears in the act of hearing.

i begin to notice that my own confession feels less like expression and more like raw material entering a process i’m not fully allowed to see. what passes through the lattice comes back with the texture of having been handled too many times.

on the therapist’s couch, the light’s softer, but the effect isn’t softer. the room’s arranged to look incidental. nothing appears symbolic, which makes everything capable of being made harmless without warning.

there’s a silence there that doesn’t behave like waiting. it behaves like processing. like what’s said is being handled while it’s still in the air, adjusted before it can settle in its original shape.

i speak too much, as i always do, and sometimes i notice that my sentences come back without their roughness. not misheard, not reframed, but smoothed in a way that feels procedural. as if anything that might snag has been quietly removed before it’s returned to me.

that smoothness begins to feel wrong.

what’s changed fades into the background.

what’s missing stays.

there are things i remember saying that no longer appear in what comes back. not because they were rejected, but because they don’t survive contact. as if the room can’t tolerate certain textures of speech, and corrects them out of existence while still letting me believe they were spoken.

sometimes i find myself wondering, afterward, whether i’m remembering correctly or only reconstructing from what’s been permitted to remain.

and the unease isn’t loud. it doesn’t announce itself. it builds in the gaps between what i felt myself say and what’s allowed to exist afterward.

like noticing, too late, that the air in the room’s been changed without the smell ever fully changing.

the repetition feels less like quiet reflection and more like sanitisation.

a sentence returns that feels like mine, but without the parts that made it difficult to keep intact. a version of feeling that’s been made easier to receive by removing what might’ve caused friction. a self that arrives back slightly cleaned of excess, and therefore slightly less recognisable as the one that left.

and then it stops being a question of understanding at all.

because the more this happens, the less certain i am that anything’s being returned.

only that it keeps speaking in my place afterward, using my voice as a surface that can be wiped clean and rewritten without ever breaking the shape of it.

and when i leave, there’s always the same quiet realization, arriving late, like air catching up to absence:

i can’t tell anymore what part of me was taken, only that whatever remains is now easier to keep.