#kafkasque

There was a house at the edge of the town

But no one lived there

Or —no one remembered living there.

The doors were always open,

The windows always shut.

The garden grew hands instead of flowers,

Pale fingers curling where roses should be.

A child once wandered inside.

She walked through the rooms,

touching nothing.

She found a dining table,

Set for a meal that had not been served.

The chairs were full.

Not with people,

But with the shapes of people—

The outlines of bodies, drawn in dust.

She whispered, "Who are you?"

And the dust whispered back,

"Who were you?"

She ran.

She told her parents.

They didn’t remember a house at the edge of town.

But she did.

And at night,

the house whispered her name.

She grew older.

The house waited.

One day, she passed by again.

The door was open.

The windows were shut.

She stepped inside.

She did not come out.

The next morning, a new child walked by.

But no one lived there.

She saw a house at the edge of the town.

Or—no one remembered living there.

Yet if one listened closely,

Through the hush of the wind,

Beneath the weight of silence,

A whisper stirred within the dust.

It called a name.

Not hers.

just one day wake up and forget.

all the disgust i was pulled through

being washed off as i fall into you

why do i have to be so lonely? so useless, yet still here.

when I realized life was a costume party,

and I attended with my real face."

- Franz Kafka

One day, without a warning,

People began turning into keys.

Not all at once-slowly, silently.

A man woke up and found his fingers brass,

His joints clicking like tumblers in a lock.

A woman smiled, but her teeth were ridges,

Not meant for chewing,

But for turning.

At first, they panicked,

They rattled, twisted, searched.

"What do we open?"

They whispered to each other, as if the answer could be found in their reflections.

But there were no locks.

Not in the doors.

Not in the walls,

Not in the world.

Only keys.

They tried fitting into each other,

Clicking, clanking,

Forcing their way into place.

But no key ever unlocked another.

Only scratches, only dents.

Years passed.

They forgot they had ever been anything else.

They jingled as they walked,

Clattered as they spoke.

They convinced themselves:

"We were always meant to be this way."

And one day, the last human turned

And the earth sighed, as if relieved.

Because it had always known,

That there was never a lock.

Only keys.

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