The Key

He said I ruin everything I touch. That my name tastes like rust. That even silence flinches when I enter a room.

He said many awful things to me. Spat them like confessions, like the words themselves could cleanse him of me. And still he kept my name on the key.

The one to the room that once meant mine.

The one that still unlocks a door

he swore he’d never open again.

Maybe he forgot it was there.

Or maybe hatred needs a souvenir.

Maybe he wanted proof

that the monster he built me into

was once a child who laughed too loud

and left fingerprints on his coffee mug.

I imagine the key resting in his palm,

metal against skin that once held me.

It must be heavy,

the way guilt is heavy when you pretend it’s gone.

He loathed me loudly, but grief doesn’t care about tone.

It grows in the throat like an apology that never learned to speak.

Sometimes I dream that he turns the key.

That the lock remembers me before his anger does.

That the door opens and I am there

not to forgive,

just to be seen as something that was once worth keeping.

Maybe that’s why he never threw it away.

Maybe even hate needs something to hold.