The Room Where I Waited

The Room Where I Waited A Poem by Henry Johnson

After the house sleeps,

One room

Has not learned to leave.

The floor remembers

The footsteps

That practiced leaving

Without ever leaving.

The walls kept

What I was too tired

To carry.

On the desk,

Repair manuals.

Never opened.

Perfect instructions

For machines

That were never broken

Until I needed

Broken things

To prove

My hands existed.

The manuals knew

What my hands

Spent years

Trying not to learn:

The mind kept breaking

Long after

My hands stopped searching

For the tool.

Some things

Were never broken.

I only needed

Something broken

To hold.

I filled the room

With broken things.

So I would never have to ask

If I was one of them.

Everything in the room

Was left behind

For a memory

That knew my name

Better than I did.

Beside them,

A ring of old keys.

Dozens of them.

Each one still carrying

The weight

Of a door

That remembered my name

After I no longer

Answered to it.

I carry them still,

Not knowing

If they belong

To doors I left behind

Or doors

That belonged

To the person

I kept promising

Would arrive

Before time

Ran out of me.

Some doors are lost

Not because they close,

But because

We become

Someone the door

No longer recognizes.

The chair sits nearby.

Where I learned

The only voice

I abandoned

And still waited

To hear return

Was my own.

A half-smoked pack of cigarettes

Rests on the arm.

The only witness

To nights

I exchanged

For a morning

That arrived

Every day

Without noticing

I was gone.

Rage became

The imaginary friend

My loneliness invented.

The only friend

That stayed

Because it never asked

Who I had failed

To become.

I kept the anger burning.

It was the last flame

In a room

That feared the dark

More than the fire.

So I shouted outward

Into the wind,

Mistaking

My own echo

For proof

Someone was there.

On the wall,

An empty bookshelf.

Holding the weight

Of books

Written in the handwriting

I almost learned

To recognize.

But sometimes

A person sleeps

In the same bed

For so many years

That they stop expecting

The door

To open

When they arrive,

And only seek

Sleep without tomorrow.

I return

To this room.

Not as an enemy.

Not as a home.

But to step beyond it,

Into a room

Where my name

Is remembered.

A guest bed.

A towel folded neatly.

Proof that someone prepared

For the stranger

Who had always

Been waiting here.

A hook on the wall

Holding keys

To homes

I will return to.

A chair

That has not forgotten

My shape.

The room never locked the door.

I was the one

Who carried

The key

Like a chain.

I leave the room.

The room

Leaves with me.

Somewhere,

A light

Remains.