I open the laptop slowly, settling it on my lap, my fingers hovering over the keyboard as the screen lights up.
The game continues.
The world continues.
And I sit there, caught between everything that’s happened and everything I’m trying to find again.
If I write, if I can lose myself in it, maybe I can find that version of me again.
The one they saw. The one they pulled out of me. The one that wasn’t afraid. The one that had something to reach for.
My fingers press down on the keys. Slow at first. Then faster. Words forming. Thoughts spilling. Something opening up inside me that feels like a breath I haven’t taken in days.
I don’t stop.
I don’t think.
I just let it come.
And as I do, as I feel myself slipping into it, into that space where everything else fades just enough for me to exist again, I realize what I’m chasing.
Not just the story.
Not just the words.
But the feeling.
Of being myself. Of belonging in my own life. Of being theirs, fully.
Not carefully.
Not protected.
Not held at a distance.
Wanted.
Claimed.
Seen.
I keep writing. Because I don’t know how else to get back there. And I need to. I need to find that part of me again.
Before it disappears completely.
forty-two
Elijah
The apartment is quiet in a way that shouldn’t feel as loud as it does.
The game has already ended, the final whistle cutting clean through the space before fading just as quickly, leaving behind the low hum of post-match commentary that I haven’t bothered to turn off. It fills the room without really touching it, voices blending into one another, numbers and statistics and replays rolling over each other without ever landing anywhere solid.
It’s just noise.
Something to stop the silence from becoming unbearable.
But it doesn’t help.
