No one really knows what happens behind closed doors:
balloons taped low along a hallway for a birthday no one saw coming,
laughter spilling out from under the crack beneath the door,
or a fist closing before a sentence finishes,
the way a house can hold a party and a war
in the same four walls, on the same Tuesday night.

No one really knows what happens inside clenched lips:
a proposal rehearsed forty times before the ring comes out,
a secret held like a coin under the tongue for luck,
or an apology someone swallowed instead of saying,
words locked behind teeth so long they forget how to leave,
the mouth becoming just another room with the light off.

No one really knows what happens under bedsheets:
two people learning each other’s names in the dark,
a fever breaking just before the sun comes up,
or a body that stopped belonging to the person in it,
grief curling into the shape where someone used to sleep,
the sheets pulled up like a wall to shut the pain out.

No one really knows what happens behind eyes wide shut:
a prayer for rain, for rent, for one more year,
or a mind slipping out while the body stays in the chair,
learning to disappear without ever leaving the room.

No one really knows what happens behind a darkened screen:
a stranger becoming a friend at two in the morning,
a search bar filled with questions no one else can hear,
a whole life curated bright. A thumb that keeps moving anyway,
scrolling past midnight, looking for something it never finds.

No one really knows what happens in a message built to vanish:
a joke too good to leave a trace, a flirt, a dare,
a confession sent, read, and erased in ten seconds flat,
the kind of truth a person can only tell
once they know it won’t have to live anywhere,
not even in the hands that asked to see it.

No one really knows what happens behind “I’m fine”:
a woman who means it, mostly, on a good Tuesday,
or a woman rehearsing it in the mirror like a line
she has to get right before she can leave the house,
two words doing the work of a hundred locked doors,
holding back whatever’s leaning on the other side.

No one really knows what happens after this door closes:
not the ones who call to check in, not the ones who don’t,
not the bank statements, not the empty side of the bed,
not the hand that used to reach for her and now just doesn’t,
not the nights she does the math on how much longer
a person can hold a house up from the inside,
or the door she’s chosen, quietly, not to open.

No one really knows.