Ash

I fell

not downward,

but inward,

into a quiet spiral

with no return.

It arrived a second time,

unexpected and fever-born.

lust had not touched me

since the first ruin.

I had wandered empty, convinced nothing would stir again.

the dreams then returned…

Not dreams…

visions.

A voice threading through my ribs,

a face hovering in the space

between sleep and forgetting.

I burned.Feverish.Delusional.

Some called it enchantment.

But it felt like poison

, slow, sweet, functional enough to pass for living.

I remembered what once was.

The one who didn’t leave by choice.

Life had rewritten that ending

with a cruel precision.

Love undone by biology,

not betrayal.

This time,

I chose absence.

Vanished from the world to orbit this new light.

Every breath a devotion.

Every glance, an altar.

I wrote.I waited.

 

They didn’t understand

what it meant

To dissolve in rhythm.

To disappear in connection.

That was the fracture.

The gap between my delusion

and their disbelief.

So it ended.

Softly.

Quiet as ash.

I returned,

visible once more

but gutted.

Longing.

Present in body, but not in spirit.

This ache was worse

Not because it cut deeper,

But because it shattered

No vision

The first taught me grief.

The second

disillusion.

Will I sip from the cup again?

knowing what the fever costs?

…probably