He sat in the chair, same one as yesterday,
the wood worn smooth by weight and waiting.
Light came through the blinds in thin, straight lines.
Dust floated, caught between motion and stillness.
He used to know how to breathe,
but it had turned into remembering.
The violence ended long ago.
No one told his hands.
They trembled.
Even when there was no sound.
Photographs leaned on the table
like wounded men who could not stand.
She smiled in one.
He did not.
He had, once.
It was before the cold took root behind his ribs,
and silence became louder than life had been.
They told him to talk.
He nodded.
He didn’t.
The bottle on the counter said nothing,
but it spoke the language he understood.
Straightforward. Brutal.
Like a man who knew what it was to lose.
Like a friend.
He walked to the window but never opened it.
Something might come in.
Or leave.
The days passed.
Or didn’t.
Time had the same face as the girl who died in his arms—
young and bleeding.
Frightened. Hopeless.
And it never aged.
At night he dreamed of rain and comfortless streets. Hard. Unforgiving.
He woke up sweating through sheets,
the scream still lodged in his throat.
He did not scream.
That would make it real.
There was a letter.
He read it once.
Then burned it in the tin pail on the porch.
The ashes blew across the yard,
gray and soft,
like her scarf,
or the skin of their baby—
the one that came too early
and left too soon.
He kept the scarf.
Never touched it.
It was folded perfectly
beneath a shirt he’d never wear again.
One morning,
the sun didn’t come up.
It was there,
but he didn’t see it.
His eyes were open.
But it was dark.
When the neighbor found him,
he was sitting straight,
hands flat on his thighs.
Not at peace.
Not afraid.
Just done.
Broken Author 