They’re there, or at least they seem to be.

Lined up against the walls of my life like fading patterns, muted, familiar only because they’ve always been in the room. They don’t speak, not really. They don’t move closer when I cry.

I tell myself they are people. I give them names, stories, smiles. But they don’t answer when I call. When is it going to end? When will there be someone for me?

It makes me wonder if I ask too much. If the weight of me, when I need carrying, is just too much to bear. Or if the world is simply too busy to notice my collapsing every night.

Sometimes I think I made them up. That I drew them, painted them, imagined them so I wouldn’t have to admit the truth: I’ve always needed people, and people have never been there.

So I sit among the wallpaper people, the ones who watch but never hold, who linger but never stay. And I wonder, maybe it’s not them.

Maybe I’ve become wallpaper too.