On Losing Someone

What loosing someone feels like is what feels like having your teeth, a part of you violently extracted. When they pull, and you’re aware you’re losing it, the resistance is terrible. Bone and tissue fighting to stay connected, to remain whole. Then comes that sickening crack, the flood of that coppery fluid in your mouth. For days, your tongue can't help but will explore that raw throbbing void. You will taste the phantom pain of what once was. You will catch yourself trying to chew with something that isn't there anymore. That bleeding eventually stops, yes. The edges of that wound will smooth over time. But your fingers will still find themselves tracing that empty space during quiet moments; mapping it’s geography of absence. Your mouth will feel ever so slightly incomplete. And though new tissue will form, though the gap will become familiar with time, you will never forget what once filled that hollow. You will learn to smile differently. You will learn to eat carefully. You will adapt to the phantom ache that will visit you in cold weather, in dreams, in sudden memories—a pain that belongs to something no longer there.

When it happens it will feel like drowning, like quicksand, like all the love in the world is leaving you at once. It will feel as though someone has reached into your chest and torn your heart out. You watch in helpless horror as they crush it in their hands, blood dripping between their fingers. Then, with cruel indifference, they shove it back into your mouth. You stumble, desperate to scream, to tell the world what has been done to you, but no sound escapes. You can’t speak to anyone. Overwhelmed and broken, you collapse to your knees. And then, trembling, you pick up the pen again. Because that’s all you can do. You pick it up again and try to go on. You try to. And hope your heart heals again. Hope.