“Watch.”
The tilt was slight. Casual. Cruel.
Ash spilled out in a thin, steady stream—soft gray powder drifting through the night air, catching the moonlight before settling into the dirt between the open graves.
Something inside me broke with a soundless snap.
The scream that tore out of me was raw and animal, shredding what little strength my voice had left. I dropped to my knees, hands clawing at my face, nails scraping skin as if I could tear the pain out by force.
My body folded in on itself, rocking hard, convulsing, forehead slamming into the dirt. Grit bit into my skin, but I welcomed it—the pain was something solid, something I could feel, something that wasn’t this.
“No—no—no—”
The sound tore out of me raw, broken, wrong.
I collapsed fully, curling into myself at the center of the circle, arms wrapped around my head as if I could shield her—shield us—even now.
My sobs came violent and uncontrollable, ripping through my ribs until they burned, until breathing felt like punishment.
I’d seen this before.
Loss reduced to something small.
Something spillable.
Something taken without permission.
My body didn’t know this was the present. It only knew violation.
The ashes darkened the soil.
My mother.
My safe place.
My only witness.
Gone—handled, scattered, erased—by a man driven by vengeance for a pregnant wife I had never harmed, a crime laid at my feet though my hands were clean.
Punished for something I did not do.
Condemned for a sin that was never mine.
“I hate this life!” I screamed into the earth, my voice shredding itself apart. “I regret the day I was born!”
The words weren’t just grief.
They were memory.
They were survival.
They were every time my body had learned the same lesson over and over—
That what I loved could be taken.
That my pain would be watched.
That no one would stop it.
