ADR

I knew it was over before anyone said it out loud. The sirens wailed, but no one ran. Gunshots in broad daylight. Between us, a body bleeds. When it happened, it felt like slow-motion agony. The pistol went off, the sound ringing in my ears. Every dime we ever spent on love hit the pavement, rolling away like scattered pearls. People screamed, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t rise above my biggest fear. They ask what happened. I don’t answer. I just look at your hands, still wet with blood, your breath, still steady. You don’t tremble. You don’t flinch. You just stand there like a man who’s done this before. Both hands on the smoking gun. I tried to save it. Pressed my hands against its chest, counted, begged, whispered prayers between desperate compressions. I swore I felt something—a gasp, a twitch, a sign that I wasn’t too late. So I kept going. Past exhaustion. Past reason. Past the moment you had already given up. You just stood there, watching, like someone who slows down to sight...

A broken ego tossed down the drain, a humming echo of a past that still resonates, a heart that beats out of habit instead of willfulness. Bandaids on bullet holes that won’t stop bleeding, silence so dreadful, you can hear your right ear ringing. ill-fated love story. if you knew there was to be a car crash in the greatest ride of your life, would you still hop in? I stare at the wreckage of something I once saw as unbreakable . from a place I never thought I'd be standing. I see it differently now. It doesn’t matter because the ship was always meant to sink. Exiled from my dreams. It’s not that we are not good people, but good people hold knives too. Sometimes to protect us, sometimes pressed against the throat of the other. My therapist asked why I didn't realize the worst part. That we were in love. Palpable, sunken, driven, covered. In love. It was all around us. Love wove itself into every breath, every glance, every word we exchanged. Why didn’t you kill me when you had ...