I’m okay.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
• • •
I have spent the last two years barely existing.
Drifting through my own life like a ghost wearing my face.
Numb. Empty. Half-gone.
And my mom has been here this whole time.
Leaving food on my desk.
Sitting beside me on the couch.
Holding my face in both hands in the kitchen and saying it is absolutely not you like she could will it to be true.
She has been here.
Right here.
And I was somewhere else.
Somewhere so far inside my own damage that I kept missing her.
I kept missing her and I didn’t even know I was doing it.
• • •
Is this how Cassian felt.
The thought lands like something physical.
Is this why he couldn’t love me.
Because he knew what it felt like to lose someone and wish he had been somewhere else all this time.
Just like he took something from me.
Is this the thing he carried through my window that night and couldn’t put down.
This exact feeling — the one that tells you time was moving all along and you weren’t paying enough attention and now it’s over and you can’t go back.
I understand something I didn’t before.
And it doesn’t help.
Nothing about it helps.
Tears are choking me.
