But all I did was carve her deeper into me.
Another drink.
Another shot.
The world blurs at the edges — softening, distorting — but not enough. Never enough.
Because I still see her.
Still fucking feel her.
Like she’s under my skin, burning through my blood, echoing in the beat of a heart I was certain had stopped working years ago.
And I can’t.
I can’t fucking do this.
I grip the edge of the sink, knuckles white, jaw locked so tight I’m surprised my teeth haven’t cracked. My reflection stares back at me in the mirror — hollow-eyed, bloodshot, a ghost of a man pretending he isn’t falling apart.
“Fuck,” I hiss, the word bouncing off marble and glass and settling uselessly in the silence, because nothing is ever loud enough to drown her out.
Nothing ever will be.
I grab the bottle and throw it.
Hard.
It explodes against the tiled wall, shards skittering across the floor like the broken pieces of a life I never deserved. Amber spills down the grout in thin, sticky trails, catching the light like the kind of sin a priest would run from.
Still not enough.
I slam my fist into the cabinet.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Blood smears across the wood, bright and hot, and the cabinet cracks beneath the force of it, but even the pain feels too far away to matter.
Still not fucking enough.
Because she’s not here.
She’s not on the balcony telling me to breathe.
She’s not tangled in my sheets stealing warmth from the cold half of the bed.
She’s not in my arms, where she never belonged but somehow fit too perfectly, like she was made for the parts of me I’ve spent years trying to bury.
She’s gone.
And I don’t know how to breathe without her anymore.
