Love never lived here. It was just a word, just a sound, just a thing people said when they didn’t know what else to say. But in my house no, not a home, just four walls and a roof love never spoke. Love never breathed. Love never knocked on the door because hate had already let itself in. You would think, with all the kids they had, that love was the language they spoke best but no. All they knew was sharp tongues and slammed doors, love letters written in venom and silence, tension thick enough to carve into the walls. Behind that white door, the one that made us look like the perfect family, love was a stranger, pacing outside, waiting to be let in. But we never did. My father, all rage and ruin, his voice a storm that never cleared, his love something you had to earn, but never quite could. My mother, all broken and brave, left, then came back, left, then came back, forgave, forgot, forgave, forgot, because maybe love meant staying, even when it hurt. And me? I learned love like learning a language without a teacher piecing together scraps of warmth I found elsewhere, reaching, aching, hoping because I didn’t want love to be what they made it. Because I have to believe love is more than screaming matches and shattered trust, more than hands that hit and words that bruise, more than a cycle spinning so fast no one remembers how to step off. This house was never a home. Just a place. Just a space. Just a foundation built on hate, waiting to crack. And yet, somehow, I still love. Somehow, I still hope. Somehow, I will build something better than the ruins they left behind. ```audio-player [[SLAM POEM.mp3]] ```