There is a verticality to certain people. They do not arrive; they occur. Like a seed with a blind, hard will, they find the microscopic fissure in the stone of my solitude—that wall I built with such careful, sterile architecture. They do not ask. To ask is to be outside, and they are already a pulse in the dark, damp chambers where I keep my silence.

And then, the word. Stay. At first, it was a cold object, a heavy pebble in the mouth. Foreign. But now it has begun to dissolve, becoming a secretion of my own ribs, a hum that is not quite music but the vibration of existing. It is a secret I am telling myself.

So, if you are to stay, do not do it with your mind. Do it with the weight of your body. Sink into the red, warm mud of my interior. Throw your weariness onto the floor of me; I have cleared these rooms of their ghosts to make space for your breathing. My heart is not a metaphor. It is a house that was built, brick by hungry brick, to transform the scream of longing into the quiet, terrifying grace of belonging.

©️ Beatriz Esmer