The weight of a stranger's living room

Found myself scrubbing the same carpet stain for twenty minutes today — not blood, just old wine, but it had soaked into the fibers like memory. The house was quiet, too quiet, and I kept thinking about how someone once sat here, laughing, spilling red on beige, not knowing they’d never come back. The cleaner’s kit’s got a new foam pad, and it worked better than the old one, but I still left with my hands aching. Sometimes you don’t clean up death — you just carry its shape.