I am made of old heartwood, and my memory is long. I remember the boot heels of soldiers and the soft slippers of tired mothers. I know the scent of a hundred winters’ worth of damp wool and the bright, metallic tang of a child’s first bloodied knee. I am the spine of this house, and everything that matters has happened on my treads.
But it is her I cannot forget, and him.
When he first ascended, I felt it. A charge in the air, a confidence in his stride that made the dust motes dance. He had what the people of this time called *rizz*; a resonant, easy charm that vibrated through my banister. She met him on the landing, and her steps, usually so light, were even lighter then, practically airborne. They laughed, and the sound was like warm honey dripping down my runner. She called it their summer *era*. I felt the weight of their joy, a pleasant, shared burden.
The joy began to sour. His ascents became less frequent, his tread less certain, laden with excuses. Her descents grew heavy, the sound of someone dragging an invisible anchor. They existed in a nebulous space she once described to a friend on the phone, a *situationship* a word that sounded as flimsy and unsatisfying as it felt beneath her feet.
I became the silent witness to her waiting. She would sit on the top step, the blue light of her phone painting her face as she engaged in the ritual of *doomscrolling*, her thumb flicking, flicking, flicking through a world of curated happiness that was not hers. From my vantage, I could see the shift. Her hope was a bright, hot flame that he kept blowing on, not to extinguish, but to watch it flicker and struggle. Her friend’s voice, a tinny buzz from the phone pressed to her ear, used a word I’d heard more and more: *gaslighting*. He was making her doubt the promises I, in my wooden stillness, had clearly heard him make.
One night, after he’d left with a casual, cutting remark about her being *delulu* for wanting clarity, she didn’t go back to her room. She sank onto the fourth step from the bottom, pulled her knees to her chest, and slid into what I heard her call *goblin mode*. The rustle of a crisp packet, the glug of wine straight from the bottle, the quiet, hitching sobs that shook my frame more than any footstep ever could. She was no longer fighting or hoping. She was performing a kind of *quiet quitting* on her own heart.
The last time he came, he exuded a final, terrible burst of *main character energy*, taking the stairs two at a time as if he were the hero of a story he was eager to finish. He did not stay long. I heard no shouting, only a low, devastating murmur from him, and then, a silence from her so profound it was like a crack in my very grain.
His descent was the worst. Each step was casual, unburdened, final. He did not hesitate. He did not look back.
At the top, she stood perfectly still. For a long time, I felt nothing but the pressure of her feet on my topmost tread. Then, a single, warm drop landed on the polished oak. It wasn’t the splash of a clumsy spill or the drip of rain from a coat. It was heavier. It soaked into me, a dark stain of grief that went deeper than varnish.
I hold the memory of that drop. I feel it in the dry rot and the winter chill. I try to focus on the mailman’s thudding boots, the cat’s soundless paws, the faint scent of baking bread from the kitchen. I try to bury the feeling under the weight of a thousand other moments. But the stain remains. A single, dark spot, warping the wood. And I know I will feel the weight of it forever, a knot of sorrow in my very core.
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