ledger of ashes

I sold my nights for fingerprints — names I don’t remember like loose coins tossed into a tin that never filled. The rooms changed, the lights lied; my skin learned to forget itself. I wore my smile like rented clothes, Sunday bright and stained at the seams. They touched the surface of me — my mother’s hands, his hands — and I kept a private ledger of omissions. When I spoke the truth, it came out thin, a threadbare apology that trembled. He said, It’s okay. His voice was a door left open. I lived in that doorway and feared the storm— not the storm outside, but the one inside his quiet. Forgiveness arrived like rain on a roof I’d hollowed — each drop a question: Will it wash me clean, or will it find the rot and make it louder? I learned to walk on eggshells not from shame alone, but from the sense that any step might be the bell that rings the end of what I dared call safety. There are nights I dream of punishment: not thunder, but a hush that strips me bare, his eyes counting the debts my mouth accrued. I pray for punishment sometimes — a clear line, a ledger closed — because mercy confuses me; mercy feels like a trap, and punishment, at least, is honest. I betrayed a promise I once kept with trembling