He just holds my gaze, steady and merciless—a priest staring down a confession he never wanted to hear.
“You walked into our war, Pia,” he says at last. “Don’t act shocked when the bullets don’t know the difference between you and the people who started it.”
He turns his head a fraction, breaking the line of my breath, and losing it thins the air.
That single step he took might as well be a canyon.
For the first time since I set foot inside this church, I feel it—
the space ripping open between us, wide and cold,
like God himself just drew a line and shoved me to the wrong side.
Survivor Guilt Rising
He turns away from me like I’ve become unholy in the space of a single breath.
Not storming off. Not slamming doors.
Just… withdrawing.
That quiet hurt is worse than anything violent he could do to me.
I follow him slowly and carefully, like the ground might split open if I move too fast. Gravel bites the soles of my shoes.The sound feels obscene—too loud for a place already soaked in silence.
“Santino, listen—”
“No. Not now.”
The words are sharp enough to cut.
They hit my ribs and knock the air clean out of me. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.
Pain carries its own volume.
He stops near the old stone fountain and grips its edge like he might tear it out of the ground if he doesn’t anchor himself to something solid. His back is to me, rigid, unyielding.
I hover behind him, useless and burning and desperate.
My chest constricts.
Not just from tonight—
but from everything I’ve buried beneath it.
My father’s blood on the hospital floor.The lies I learned to breathe like oxygen.The nights spent wrapped around men I didn’t care about just to survive one more dawn.The doors I unlocked.The alarms I disarmed.The names I whispered into the wrong ears.The bodies I never looked at long enough to regret.
Collateral.
That’s the word we all use when the math gets ugly.
Children aren’t supposed to be part of the numbers.
And yet—
Here I am.
A woman who slipped through darkness and came out the other side sharp and breathing.
