The Bride at the Stairwell

You were beautiful
not in the way the living are,
but in the way a memory breathes
after its body is gone.

Dressed in white,
you glowed beneath the low light
of that old Victorian house
a house that creaked like it knew your name,
a house that kept your last joy
trapped between its walls.

I stood at the staircase,
four years old,
my small hands clutching the banister
as you twirled in a dress
that floated more than it moved.
Light followed you
like it was tethered to your spine.

I had never seen happiness so bright
so bright it felt borrowed,
as if the room had stolen it
just to show me what I would never touch again.

I wondered if I would ever wear white,
ever stand before a mirror
filled with hope
instead of silence.
My heart beat fast,
but my feet stayed still
rooted in awe
and something colder.

You walked with such grace
a softness that didn’t belong
to this world anymore.
Your cheeks were warm,
your eyes alive,
but the air around you
shivered.

Then I saw it
the red.

A stain blooming across your side,
like a secret the house refused to hide.
It bled into the fabric
with a quiet insistence,
a truth only children
and ghosts can hear.

No one warned you.
No one wept.
No one but me
noticed the way death
had already laid its hand on you.

You stepped closer,
smiling still,
your joy repeating itself
like a broken lullaby
and when you passed through me,
the truth sank like cold water:

You never made it to your wedding day.
You were caught in a loop,
replaying the hope
you never lived long enough to claim.

I stood there
a child made of questions
wondering if your fate
was a mirror held up to mine.

Because no one but me
saw you in that room,
in that dress,
in that house from 1912
the home I once called mine,
the home that held you
long after the world let you go.