By Eva Dias Costa in Signals — 13 Jun 2025

#11. No Manual for Sleep.

The girl lived under a staircase
that no one believed existed.

It was there — but only sideways.

She kept a notebook
filled with diagrams of escape tunnels —
none of which had ever worked.

Once a week,
she’d test the walls for kindness.
They rarely responded.

She was given a bell
but told not to ring it.

Instead,
she learned to hum in Morse code.

No one taught her how to sleep,
so she practiced going very still
and hoped it would be close enough.

The adults said:
She’s difficult.

But the furniture knew better.