I dragged my tongue over my teeth, tasting blood that still hadn’t gone away and let that thought sit where it wanted, because it didn’t feel unfamiliar. It felt close. Like something I’d been circling around for years without actually saying it out loud.
What if I was never ruined?
What if there wasn’t some moment where everything went wrong?
What if it had been there from the beginning, and everything that came after only dragged it further out into the open?
Maybe that was the part nobody ever wanted to admit. The idea that some people aren’t destroyed into becoming something monstrous. Some people are simply born with something wrong already sitting inside them, waiting for the rest of life to pull it closer to the surface. Everyone loves the damaged child story because it makes things easier to explain. Easier to forgive. Easier to package into something tragic instead of something deeply unsettling. But standing there, staring at that grave, I couldn’t stop thinking about how natural all of this had started feeling to me. How little resistance there had really been in the end. Maybe none of it created me.
Maybe it just removed enough layers for me to finally see what had been there the entire time.
I let out a breath through my nose, low and uneven, because when I looked back it didn’t feel like a straight line from “good” to “bad”. It felt more like something unfolding.
The silence as a kid, the way I disappeared into my own head like it was the only place that made sense, the way things didn’t land the way they were supposed to in my head, then everything after that. Bartosz, Krystyna, Zwierek, my father, my mother, all of it. People would probably say that’s what made me, that’s where it broke, but what if that’s just where it got clearer? Easier to see?
I moved, and pain immediately tore through my side where the knife had gone into me earlier, deep and hot enough to drag me back into my body for a second. A brutal reminder that no matter where my head disappeared to, my body was still standing here bleeding through it.
Could it have been different? If she hadn’t tried to kill me, if I’d stayed, if I’d grown up somewhere normal. The thought didn’t last long, because no matter how I tried to twist it, it always ended the same way. Just a different path to the same place. Like it didn’t actually matter what happened, like this was always where it was going to land, and that sat heavier than anything else. Not the idea that I was fucked, but that I might’ve been fucked from the start.
I looked at her grave again. At how it had been left, no candles or flowers, just something that had been abandoned and slowly swallowed by time. I don’t think I was ever gonna admit this, not even to myself, but standing there, I wish I’d met her, just once. Not even for something big, not for answers or some kind of dramatic confrontation where everything gets laid out and makes sense in the end, just once. To see how she looked at me, to know if there was even a second where she hesitated, where she almost didn’t do it. Or, maybe worse, where she didn’t hesitate at all.
I shifted my jaw, feeling it tighten and let out something that almost sounded like a laugh, because then the next thought came right after it, cutting straight through that soft, pathetic part of me.
What kind of goodbye does someone like that even deserve?
Someone who looked at their own child and decided the world would be better off without him. Someone who set the tone for everything that came after without even sticking around to see it. I stood there for a second longer, staring down at her name like it might give me an answer. It didn’t, I mean of course it didn’t. So… I did what any sane man would do. I did what felt right, given everything. I let out a slow breath, dragged a hand through my hair and stepped a little closer to the stone. A fitting goodbye, right? Something honest, something almost proportional. I huffed under my breath, the corner of my mouth pulling just slightly, something dry and ugly settling in my chest.
Yeah, that felt about right.
So, I pissed on her grave.
Pretty, I know. You’re judging me right now, aren’t you, little Ghost? Or maybe you’re not. Maybe that’s why you’re still here.
That thought lingered a second longer, then it faded. Because even as I stepped back, even as I adjusted my clothes and looked down at what I’d done, it didn’t feel like enough, not even close. If anything, it made the emptiness darker. Like I’d scratched the surface of something and found out there was a lot more underneath it that wasn’t going anywhere. I looked back at the grave. At her name. The stone had been left untouched for so many years before I showed up, and somewhere in the middle of staring at it, something in my head started turning. A thought pushed itself forward hard enough that I couldn’t shove it back down again once it fully formed.
I kept my eyes on the grave, my jaw pulling tighter the longer I stood there.
No. This wasn’t enough.
Not for what she did or for what I became.
Not for the fact that after everything, I still ended up standing here in front of her. If this was going to be a goodbye, it needed tomeansomething. And suddenly, I knew exactly how I wanted to do it.
I didn’t stay lingering by the grave, if I had, I might’ve lost the nerve, or worse, talked myself out of it in that irritating, reasonable way people pretend is strength, so I turned and walked deeper into the cemetery. Gravel once again crunching under my shoes, rows of stones passing me by. Names, dates, little offerings left behind like proof that someone, somewhere, still cared. Flowers that hadn’t fully died yet, candles melted into warped shapes, photographs tucked into the corners of polished marble. None of it touched me, I just kept going. Until the graves thinned out and the path narrowed, until the place started to feel less like something maintained and more like something forgotten, that’s where I saw it.
A small shed pushed out near the edge, half hidden behind overgrown bushes that had started claiming it for themselves. The wood was weathered, paint peeling in strips. The door, locked. I stopped in front of it, staring at the chain looped through the handles, the metal dull and worn but still holding. For a second I just stood there, not thinking much. Then I glanced down and spotted a rock, heavy and jagged on one side, good enough. I bent down, picked it up, felt the weight of it settle into my palm, then stepped closer and swung. A loud crack that echoed a little too much in the quiet as the lock gave, snapped loose, dropping against the door with a dull clatter. I let the rock fall from my hand and pushed the door open as the smell hit. Damp wood, rust and old earth. Tools leaned against the walls in no real order, things left behind and forgotten until someone needed them again, and then I saw it. A shovel, perfect.
I stepped inside and grabbed it, running my hand along the handle out of pure habit before I noticed the small black spider sitting near the metal head. It barely moved when I leaned closer.
Slowly, I held my hand out beneath it and let it crawl onto my skin, its tiny legs dragging lightly across my palm as I watched it for a second in silence. Then I carefully placed it down on one of the shelves inside the shed, picked the shovel back up, and walked back outside, leaving the door hanging open behind me. The path back felt shorter, or maybe I just didn’t notice it as much this time, because my head was quieter now, focused. By the time I reached her grave again, the shovel rested heavy in my hand, the edge of it catching the light as I stepped back into that empty patch of ground where no one came anymore.
I stepped in front of the stone, looked at her name again, then lowered my gaze to the dirt beneath it. Yeah, this felt better already. I didn’t give myself too much time to think, if I had, I might’ve hesitated. Might’ve stood there staring at that stone again until the moment passed and turned into something else, so I didn’t. I just stepped forward, planted the shovel into the ground right in front of the grave and pushed down. The earth didn’t welcome it, it resisted. Packed tight, heavier than it looked, the top layer dry and stubborn like it had decided a long time ago that nothing was supposed to get through again.
I leaned my weight into it harder, boot pressing down against the metal, forcing it deeper until it finally broke through with a dull crunch, then I pulled. The first scoop came up rough, uneven, clumps of dirt falling apart as I threw them to the side. Again and again. The sound started to build around me. The scrape of metal biting into soil, the thud of dirt hitting the ground, my own breathing creeping in underneath it, getting heavier without me really noticing when it changed. The smell followed, damp earth, it clung to the back of my throat, mixedwith the copper taste that still hadn’t left my mouth and for a second it almost made me pause.
The shovel hit resistance again and again, roots catching on the edge of it, forcing me to yank harder, tearing them loose with a sharp snap that echoed a little too loudly in the quiet. My hands started to ache. Fingers tightening around the handle, skin dragging with every movement until it burned in that dull, familiar way. I shifted my grip, didn’t stop.
Sweat started building along my spine, sticking my shirt to my back, sliding down over my skin that was already raw in places I didn’t want to think about. Every time I bent forward, something pulled in my side where the blade had caught me earlier. A messy pain. It flared when I pushed too hard, when I twisted wrong, when I forgot for a second that my body wasn’t whole. I kept forgetting, or maybe I just didn’t care enough to adjust.
