A forgotten childhood home stands waiting, holding every truth she buried, and the girl she used to be.

I never meant to come back here.
The house at the end of the dirt road, the one I swore was just a childhood nightmare.
Its paint still peels like old scars.
Its windows still watch like eyes that know too much.

I stand on the porch, key in my palm.
It shouldn’t exist. They tore it down when I was sixteen, the night I finally told someone what happened inside.
But here it is.
Whole waiting.

When I step inside, the floorboards sigh under my feet, familiar, disappointed.
Each room breathes secrets back into my lungs:
The corner where I hid my diary.
The kitchen where I learned to lie with a smile.
The closet where I buried my screams into my pillow, pretending I didn’t hear footsteps.

Upstairs, the door to my old room is cracked open.
My reflection stares back at me in the dusty mirror, but she’s younger, braver, and unbroken.
She mouths something I can’t quite hear.

I reach out, hand trembling on the frame.
This house remembers every part of me I tried to bury under years, distance, and better stories.
Maybe that’s why it still stands,
to remind me that some truths deserve to come home.

.    .    .