By Gideon Adeyeye

There is a strange silence

that enters a house

after the last person leaves.

Not the peaceful kind.

The kind that knows

where everyone used to sit.

The dining chair

with the broken leg.

The mark on the wall

from when we were children.

The corner where my brother

used to throw his schoolbag.

The kitchen

where my mother shouted

because nobody wanted

to wash plates.

Even the arguments

seem to have left

an echo behind.

I returned home

years later

and discovered

that the house had become smaller.

Or maybe

I had become larger.

The ceiling

looked lower.

The hallway looked shorter.

The rooms had lost their old proportions.

I stood where we once gathered

and could almost hear us.

A laugh.

Ordinary life!!!

The kind we never photograph

because we assume

there will always be another evening.

There wasn’t.

Not exactly.

People grew. People moved.

People married. People died.

Some relationships

became birthday messages.

Some became silence.

Some became

“we should really visit soon,”

until years passed.

That is the cruelty

of growing older:

You begin to understand

that many endings

do not announce themselves.

There is no music.

No final speech.

Sometimes

it is simply the last Sunday

everyone sat around the same table.

The last Christmas

before somebody moved away.

The last time

your father carried you

without saying,

This is the last time.

We do not know

which ordinary moments

are secretly historical.

That is why I am trying

to pay attention now.

To sit longer. To answer the phone.

To take the picture.

To stay at the table

after the food is finished.

To ask,

“How are you really?”

Not because I am sentimental.

Because I finally understand

that time does not steal

with violence.

It steals quietly.

One ordinary day

at a time.

And one day

you return home

and the house is still standing,

but everybody

who made it home

has become a memory.

ABOUT THE POET

Gideon Adeyeye is a Nigerian-born poet and spoken word artist based in Manchester, UK. His love affair with poetry began in 2018 during his final year at university at Dwelling Place, a programme organised by FCS. Watching poets perform with such depth awakened a fascination with the power of spoken words. With vivid storytelling, Gideon turns lived experience into poetry that feels both personal and universal. His work often journeys from pain to purpose, from hardship to hope, asking what we become when life demands strength before we are ready.

For Gideon, poetry is more than words on a page, it is testimony. A way of looking back at where we have been, honouring those who carried us, and declaring that our beginnings do not have the final word.