My body curls into itself on the floor, my forehead pressed to his letter, my sobs shaking the walls until it feels like the whole house is bleeding with me.
And for the first time since he left—I believe he’s not coming back.
Not whole.
Not breathing.
Maybe not at all.
The sound that tears out of me then?—
isn’t just grief. It’s the sound of my heart breaking into something I’ll never put back together again.
The world doesn’t move.
It can’t.
It won’t.
I’m still on the floor, cheek pressed against the hardwood, chest caving in like someone’s knee is there, crushing, crushing. The air won’t come. My throat is raw, ripped open with screams I don’t remember letting out. My nails claw at the floor like if I dig deep enough, I’ll find him buried under it, alive, waiting.
MIA.
Missing.
Not dead. Not alive.
Just gone.
The words echo, jagged, ricocheting around my skull until I can’t tell if it’s them or me whispering it over and over.
I can taste blood. My lip split against the floor when I went down. My teeth still ache. My whole body trembles, not with cold but with the kind of heat that burns from the inside out—rage and grief and terror so tangled I can’t separate them.
The soldiers’ boots scrape once, twice. They don’t come closer. They don’t touch me. Maybe they know if they try, I’ll break them with my bare hands.
Or maybe they’ve already walked out. I don’t know. I can’t look. I can’t move.
All I can do is whisper his name into the floorboards, again and again, until it doesn’t sound like a name anymore. Until it sounds like begging. Until it sounds like nothing.
“Dax…”
The sobs rip through me, violent, convulsing, like my body is trying to tear itself apart from the inside. My chest hits the floor with every shudder. My fists slam until bruises bloom. I can’t stop.
Six months.
Two months.
Now this.
My mind claws for his voice, his letters, the feel of his necklace in my palm when I couldn’t sleep. But even those slip like smoke, and I choke harder, scream louder, as if I can drag him back with noise, with pain, with my own ruin.
He promised.
He fucking promised.
The floor creaks under me with every tremor of my body, but it holds. I don’t. I collapse smaller, tighter, curling in on myself until my ribs stab sharp into my stomach. I want to vanish into the cracks, disappear with him.
The silence after my sobs die out is worse than the screaming. Worse than the knock. Worse than the words.
