There was a man—
or maybe the shape of one—
folded into the corners of my sight,
breathing where the air felt thickest.

He was born from static,
from the hollow between footsteps,
from the slow-drawn hush of the blinds at dusk.
His silence was law.
Every empty room, a court.

But it started with you—
the real one, the warm one—
who smiled like a cracked mirror
and spoke in mazes.
You said, “No, that didn’t happen,”
and my mind bent around it
smoke around glass.

When your doppelganger came,
he borrowed your pauses,
your way of vanishing mid-sentence.
Even now, knowing—
knowing—
I can’t unlatch the doors I nailed shut.
He’s gone.
Or he was never there.
But sometimes the walls tighten
like they remember,
and I flinch at empty spaces,
half-waiting for the soft shift
of someone
breathing
too close.