Rocking.
Like a child clawing back from a nightmare. No tears came. Just an unbearable pressure. Hot and brutal behind my eyes. In my chest. In my throat. Like my bones were trying to scream but had forgotten how.
“I can’t breathe in here.”
I couldn’t take it. The walls breathed. Remembered. Whispered her name in every crack and corner. Her absence was louder than anything in my head.
“She’s everywhere… and yet she’s not even here,” I bit out through clenched teeth.
An inhuman sound clawed up my throat, but I swallowed it down before it could breach my lips. I lurched to my feet and slammed the back door open so hard it rattled on the hinges.
Cold air slapped my face. My sneakers hit wet earth, slipping in the mud as I bolted across the yard. Long grass lashed my ankles, sharp and cold. My lungs burned as I pushed myself too fast, too soon, but I didn’t slow. Didn’t look back.
My old swing set creaked as I passed it, rusted chains swaying with no one in them, a hollow, lonely sound that followed me like a question I couldn’t answer.
The cliffs rose ahead, sharp, brutal, waiting for me like they always did. Salvation or punishment. I didn’t know which they offered anymore.
By the time I reached the edge, my legs gave out. I collapsed where grass gave way to jagged rock and the world fell open beneath me. Black water churned below, salt spray stung my face and coated my lips.
Stormlight fractured the sky. The ocean roared. And I stayed. Because maybe here—on the edge of everything—I could still feel her. Maybe her voice lived in the wind, tangled with salt. Maybe the ocean remembered what I couldn’t.
I dug my fingers into the damp ground, nails scraping stone and soil, just to keep myself anchored to something solid.
She used to say the ocean brought her peace. That it knew how to hold her pain and helped her heal.
But she was wrong.
The ocean didn’t give anything back. It only took. It took her laugh. Her breath. Her voice. It took the space she filled.
It took my future and left me with silence, carving me out until all that remained was ache rattling inside fragile bones.
My skin didn’t fit right. It felt too tight, too thin, like I’d been shoved into someone else’s body and told to survive in it. Every breath scraped my throat raw, loud and jagged in the empty space behind my eyes. I kicked off my shoes and flung them behind me. Gravel bit into my soles with sharp, precise pain that reminded me I still existed. Cold gnawed at my feet, climbed my calves, and sank into every exposed inch of skin.
My shirt clung damply to my shoulders while the rest of it snapped and whipped in the wind, slapping my ribs like punishment.
Below, the waves battered the cliff face again and again, like relentless fists pounding on a door that would never open.
“Where are you, Mom?” The words tore out of me. “Come back. Please… just come back.” My voice split, raw and ruined, the kind of sound that hurt my ribs as I made it.
Nothing answered. No whisper from beyond. No signs appeared in the endless dark sky. Just the ocean’s relentless crash and the hollow hush after, like the world had stopped listening long ago. Maybe it never listened at all.
My toes curled over the edge as I stepped forward. The drop yawned open beneath me. Black and endless. The call of the void. The horizon was gone, swallowed by the oncoming storm.
That’s when a thought came—not loud or violently—just a whisper sliding up my spine:What if I just stopped trying? Whatif I let go?It didn’t scare me. That was the worst part. It felt almost peaceful. Soft. Quiet, like falling asleep wrapped in her cardigan.
I didn’t move. Didn’t fall. Just stood there and let the wind ravage my clothes and the waves tear at my thoughts, and wondered if that still counted as being alive.
It was strange how the brain could make things feel real without ever proving they were. It trusted nerves over logic. Breath over reason. Sensation over truth.
That’s when I felt it. It wasn’t a sound or a touch. Just the weight of a presence—like something warm and steady settling between my shoulder blades, like a gaze pressing there, gentle but impossible to ignore.
The fine hairs along my arms lifted. My shoulders tensed, then softened, as if my body had decided on its own that it was safe.
Someone was behind me.
Watching over me.
Not in a way that made me feel hunted or followed, but in a way that made me feel held. Protected. I didn’t turn around. Didn’t dare breathe too deeply in case the spell broke.
