stay

The house is already full when I arrive.

Furniture presses in from all sides. Heavy, antique pieces. Dark wood, carved legs, velvet worn thin at the arms. Nothing matches. Nothing fits. It feels arranged by someone who isn’t here anymore, or worse—someone who never left.

I stand in the middle of it and know, immediately—
this is not mine.

There’s a man in the house.
Not always visible, but present in the way things sit wrong.

He has a false eye. It catches light differently. 
Doesn’t quite follow or soften.
His teeth are wrong too. 
Too many, or too sharp—it shifts when I try to focus.

I don’t speak to him.
I don’t need to.
His things are everywhere.

Drawers that don’t open properly. Chairs too heavy to move. A table that takes up the entire room but serves no purpose. I start pulling at it anyway, dragging, forcing space where there isn’t any.

This is not mine.

The walls don’t hold sound properly.
Voices bleed through from other rooms, other houses—men shouting
low, aggressive, relentless anger that doesn’t belong to me, but lands anyway, vibrating through the floorboards.

Music crashes over it—loud, hard, electric. It doesn’t drown anything out. It just stacks on top, another layer, another intrusion.

The house shifts.
Another room. Another house.
Worse, somehow.

The kitchen is wrong.
The freezer hums too loudly. When I open it, everything is soft—melted, leaking. Butter slips through my fingers, oily, and impossible to hold.

I close it. 

This is not mine.

Money is missing. I don’t remember losing it, only the aftermath—the hollow space where it should be. I try to trace it back, but the connection cuts clean, like a wire snapped. No return. No access.

Just absence.

A marketplace.
Crowded. Bright. Too many hands, too many voices. Things being bought, sold, exchanged. I move through it without touching anything.

A woman stands at a sink somewhere, brushing her teeth. Slow. Methodical. Foam at the corners of her mouth. She stares at me. And I feel the toothpaste foaming in my own mouth. I feel the need to spit, but I wait for her. She never does.

Everything is happening at once.
Every house is full.
Every room is taken.

Furniture. 
People. 
Noise.

I keep moving through it, carrying nothing, and still—
there’s no space.

This is not mine.

I don’t know which house it is anymore, only that it’s the one I choose to stop in.
The air is thick with everything that’s been left behind.

I start again.

Dragging the table. Pushing it toward the wall. It resists at first, then gives, scraping loudly across the floor. The sound is sharp, final.

Space opens.
Not much. 
But enough.

I stand there, breathing, looking at what’s left.

A place for a smaller table.
Chairs that don’t crowd each other.
A sofa—something soft, something that holds.
Something I choose.
Something that can stay.

Her voice cuts through before I see her.
Clear. 
Strong. 
Uncontained.

It doesn’t fight the noise—it replaces it.

I turn.

Two women. 
Close. 
Solid. 
Unmoved by anything around them.

One of them is singing.
Her voice comes from somewhere deep, something anchored, something that doesn’t ask permission to exist.

She steps forward, reaches for the other, and lifts her—effortless, like she was always meant to be held that way.

The word lands first in the melody, then in the body—
stay

She sings it again, stronger.
Stay.

It’s not a question.
Not a plea.
A decision.

And this time—
I stay.

© Samira Wyld 2026

Thank you for reading another post from Shadows And Midnight Screams where we delve into the world of shadows, desire, and untamed expression. My illustrated collection of poetry ‘Twenty Past Midnight’ is now available as a paperback and you can find out more about that here.

And until next time…
Stay seXy, Stay wYld, Be Free™