Roula 1995 -

No. I came because my mother had started sleeping in the guest room. Because my father's silences were louder than any argument. Because I had punched a wall in Connecticut and broken my knuckles and felt nothing.

She was wrong. I was never the ghost. She was—is—a girl made of smoke and figs and locked doors, still standing on that balcony in July 1995, still half-turned away from the lens, waiting for a boy who never learned to say the right thing. Roula 1995

The brass key sits in my desk drawer now, beside the photograph. Sometimes, on humid nights when the jasmine outside my own window blooms, I swear I can still smell her. I swear I can hear her voice, translating sorrow into a language I almost understand. Because I had punched a wall in Connecticut