The body learns absence more slowly than the mind.

A Collaboration with EC (@erroneouschoices)

By midnight the silence had teeth. I fed it the fear that sits low in my chest until it bit down on my nervous system and set it on fire. I kept feeding it anyway, one catastrophe rehearsal after another. By morning I was searching for exits from a thing with no doors, moving from thought to thought the way trapped animals throw themselves against fences.

Did you want to be my moon
It speaks its own language
And it’s kneeling again.
I’m a burning eclipse, beyond salvation.

By the time light reached the room, the fire had burned down to something heavier. Not the white heat of panic. Something closer to gravity. I circled the same thoughts with the certainty of planets condemned to orbit, wearing grooves through myself deep enough to disappear in. Even my exhaustion revolved around you.

Will you deliver like prophecy?
Nobody is coming to stop you
The rings that circle me turn into useless halos
So don’t promise me, nourish me

Eventually even the pain grew tired. What remained was smaller and harder to name. A slow quiet pressure moved through me with the patience of tides. I stopped searching for exits. The morning came anyway, pale and ordinary, while everything inside me tried to remember how not to be hungry for you.