Nothing feels like it matters the way it used to.
There’s a moment where something rises in my chest, something sharp and desperate that feels like it might turn into panic, like it might push me up, make me move, make me fight, and then it’s gone.
Not because it resolved.
Because it slipped.
Because I couldn’t hold onto it long enough for it to become anything real.
I lie there instead, staring at nothing.
Letting the feeling pass through me without catching.
Somewhere, distantly, I know this isn’t me.
That I should be fighting harder.
That I should be doing something.
Anything.
But that thought feels far away too.
Like it belongs to someone else.
Days have passed.
I know that.
I don’t know how many. I don’t know what’s happened in between them. I don’t know what he’s done while I’ve been asleep.
I don’t want to know. The worst part isn’t the fear anymore. It isn’t even him.
It’s the way something inside me has started to go quiet.
The way the edges of everything I was holding onto are starting to blur.
The way hope doesn’t feel solid anymore. Like it’s something I remember having instead of something I still do.
I close my eyes again.
Not because I want to.
Because it’s easier than staying awake.
And for the first time since this started, there’s a small, distant part of me that wonders if this is just what it is now.
twenty
Elijah
By the time it reaches day five, the anger stops feeling like something that needs to be released.
It doesn’t climb up my spine anymore or settle behind my ribs waiting for something to push it over the edge. It sits lower than that now, deeper, like it’s found somewhere permanent to stay, something that doesn’t need movement to exist because it isn’t going anywhere.
It’s there when I breathe.
There when I think.
