The Hallway

Don't tell anyone.

It's a memory.

It's a feeling.

It's a sound.

An echo buried in my head,

repeating

like a sixteen-year earworm.

I am in my kitchen

watching my family.

My children laugh at Dad,

covered in flour,

struggling to fold dough

into a bread pan.

The sun is shining.

The birds are singing.

Not a cloud in the sky,

except—

the one gathering

in my mind,

my gut,

my nervous system, until it

tears me

from this happy moment.

It drags me

through the refuse I left

in my wake

sixteen years ago—

replaying old pains,

old decisions,

old mistakes.

I walk a hallway whose doors

twist

and refuse to end.

Each one another year.

Each one replaying

in a broken loop,

another version of myself

I've long since

outgrown.

Another door.

I cringe.

Another door.

I wince.

Another door.

My eyes fill

with silent oceans,

made heavier

with every turn

of a knob.

Each door opens

onto another

almost-life—

one I buried alongside

the people

I hurt most.

Contrition

that nearly tore me apart

for promises made to others

on behalf of a child

before he could even breathe—

a child who taught

a new mother

which of those promises

could no longer be kept.

I leave each room carrying

one more stone,

one more name,

one more what if

balanced

upon my shoulders.

And with it,

I carry a flame,

small and tender

within my heart.

Its light

is my children.

Its heat

is my remorse.

I house it

like a votive flame.

Blessed

and burdened—

I cannot tend it

without burning

my hands

on the fire.

And still,

I return to this hallway,

so many times now

that I know which floorboards

groan

under the weight

of my guilt.

Which doors

stick,

pushed closed by

the memories looping

endlessly behind them.

Which knobs

bite the palm

as I turn them.

And just as

the hallway, too,

begins to bend,

stretching

like a carnival mirror,

just before the floor

turns to quicksand—

before it swallows

another version

of me—

It's okay...I'm here.

It's a sound.

It's a touch.

It's a taste.

A communion so practiced

my body finds it

before my mind can.

A devotion so hard-wired

my nervous system

calms in reverence.

The hallway loosens,

its distortions slipping back

into the flat, plain plaster

of ordinary walls.

The swirling colors beneath my feet

grow still,

and solidify,

becoming familiar,

rug-covered floorboards

once again.

The smell of flour

and baking bread

curls

through the air.

Laughter returns

like melody

to my ears.

The kitchen returns.

The hallway waits.

And I am still here.

____________________

The Hallway is what happens when C-PTSD and accountability collide.

People often imagine healing as a series of straightforward steps, progressing until eventually you move on. For someone living with C-PTSD, it is rarely that simple. The mind latches onto the nearest what if, the closest almost-life, the rawest memory, and pulls us back into it over, and over, and over—even after we have grieved it, learned from it, and continued living.

This poem explores the sensory experience of C-PTSD, where memory is not a smooth-running reel but a hallway that loops endlessly through old versions of ourselves. But it is equally a poem about returning to the present. Here, love becomes the tether, and devotion the regulator, drawing us back to what is real when the past threatens to become the only thing we can see.

The Hallway is the second poem in a trilogy about accountability, memory, and learning that healing is not about evading guilt, but about quietly choosing—again and again—to return to the present, even while the past keeps calling us back.