In the doorway there is a gap for my shoes on the shiny sleek eggshell tiles. On the table there is a spot for my bags and keys. A shelf has been cleared in the fridge and the bookcase. Your mother put an extra toothbrush by the sink, handle heavy with my name. The dog barks at other guests but not at me. I know where the good forks are. I peek through the door. The room glows in womblike pink. I watch you breathe, consider waking you.

I eat my breakfast alone, moving through the kitchen like a phantom, returning ladles and plates to cupboards and drawers. I disappear out the door like a thief. I sit outside in your gardens, working. The morning air is cold on my arms and the grass is wet on my thighs and the world is impossibly quiet. I have made this house my own. A home. I know it cannot last.

I know I will eat my dinner with you. We’ll go out. We’ll have a table for two in the corner. I feel I have lived 100 lives by the time you lumber down the stairs, sleepy eyed. You have lived in many houses. In my mind this one is the stage of all the stories you tell. The fridge is covered in pictures of you and plastered with Korean papers I can’t read. You standing with a soccer ball, next to a giraffe, next to your sister, under a tree. How could you have ever been so young?

On the day you leave the house feels different. The doorway is cluttered with suitcases. The table is heavy with passports and tickets. I help you clear the last shelf in your closet- meticulously folding winter shirts just like you taught me even though it the heat of summer here. You say it will be cold when you arrive. The dog is barking. I don’t know where your wallet is. Your parents are still in their pyjamas. The walls and the floors gleam like the inside of a hollow shell as the spiral tightens. I feel just how much I don’t belong.

I am stuffing your clothes into an overfull suitcase splayed open on the kitchen floor like a patient on an operating table. I am a diligent surgeon, folding and tucking.

“Umma? Umma!” you shouts for your mom up the stairs. I keep folding. Something about the word makes my heart bleed. I imagine it being wrung out in my chest like a crimson sponge. I keep folding. Something about you calling up to your mom makes me picture you as the little kid whose image is sprinkled around the house like holy water to ward off a disappointing teenage ghost. I catch the eye of the gap tooth seven-year-old on the fridge. Something about the word and the pictures feels too much like bleeding. I have nothing left to fold.

I cannot look your mother in the eye. I cannot find my shoes. I cannot find another reason to stay in a house that isn’t mine.

Outside on the driveway I hold on to you as long as I can. The letting go is easier. My best friends text me. My sister cleans my room. My mother takes me out to lunch. I feel very loved. You call me from the plane. I don’t remember driving home. I will have to love myself in your place. I make for a poor substitute.

I spend an hour waiting for you to call me before bed. You are a habit I don’t think I will break. I remember no call is coming. I wonder if the habit of you will break me.