This Room Does Not Answer

There is no God in this lightbulb. Only the slow hum of its dying. My shadow curls in the shape of a fetus on the tile floor, unwanted by chairs, forgotten by the table. I sip yesterday's coffee like a ritual. Cold. Black. It does not speak to me but I pretend it does. The walls are beige and unjudging. They do not hate me. They simply watch. Their silence is sterile, like the nurse who saw me cry at twelve and said, You'll grow out of it. I trace the dust on the window ledge like it's a constellation one only I remember. Even the spiders don't write here anymore. Their threads gave up last winter when I stopped praying. Outside, the city is still sinning. It wears neon like confession. But I stay here, an apostate in a cubicle cathedral, waiting for my name to mean something to someone again.