Today’s choice
Previous poems
May Garner
The House Keeps Score
The house keeps score
in places no one checks any longer.
A hairline crack behind the fridge.
The soft dip in the hallway floor
where grief learned how to pace.
We didn’t mark the days
after you left.
We measured time by sound,
how the door stopped opening,
how the stairs forgot your weight.
There are rooms that still expect you.
They hold their breath
the way lungs do underwater.
Even now, the walls lean in,
listening for damage.
Early, I came to understand
that silence isn’t empty;
it’s crowded with what wasn’t said.
With apologies that miss their cue.
With footsteps that turn around too late.
Some nights, the house exhales.
Wood ticking like a body cooling.
I stand still, afraid to interrupt
whatever it’s remembering.
May Garner (She/Her) is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for fifteen years, beginning her journey on Wattpad, and growing into a published author over the span of a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in over thirty literary presses including Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Livina Press, Speckled Trout Review, and other.
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and me trudging on, even though
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We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
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The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
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to the contrary, can’t speak.
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I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.
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& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse
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Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.
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The river is an old demon
& my heart is an infirm creature
The river is sure of its way
& my heart is capable of lies.