Prescription, List, Liturgy, Psalms, Epiphany. In That Order.

 I have checked every box on every list they’ve made about how to get over someone. I carefully followed each like a recipe: “Do not reach out,” “Do not seek the past,” don’t do this, don’t do that.” I obeyed. I followed every guide; they showed me the wound but never stopped the bleeding.

I wanted the list to accelerate the process but the process went through me like a bullet, straight ahead, leaving a chamber behind. Hollow, echoing, ready to host new traumas. If you look closely you’ll see the hole in my chest, if you peer through it you’ll notice how I haven’t known any purpose since then.

I made a museum of the shipwreck, studying it from each angle as if a new view could reveal something I missed. Yet every autopsy, every study, showed the same verdict: it wasn’t lack of love, just cowardice, summoning all dead ends. I stand at the same shoreline I saw you depart from, like any given tide will bring revelation.

The thing is: I recognized the end, long before I could digest it but that didn’t necessarily make me ready. like a record skipping over the same wound. knowledge? Just words. From teeth to the outside, never inwards. Now I’m terrified, anguished and running out of time. In a way that has little to do with storms: sooner than later it will be a year since. And I haven’t moved from the crime scene. I still ponder at the memory of you, saying you loved me and not doing anything about it. I knew the war was over and I had lost. I even, at my weakest, began to believe I might be the problem. Even that diagnosis feels like a puzzle whose pieces refuse to fit.

All I know is nothing has hurt that much since.

You corroded my identity. I’m still unsure which way to look, where to go. People mistake freedom for what it is: loneliness. I can go anywhere I want just not home. I keep learning how to live inside a body that remembers you in every bone. Near-death experience.

Strangers stare at me like I’m missing a limb, I fully intend cross the street without looking both ways but they all stop at the sight of me like I’m a stop sign. They all can see I’m missing something yet no one can point out what is.

Maybe it’s just me?

But, alas, not effective.

No prescription, no lists, no liturgies, no psalms and no epiphany

Nothing has reanimated my heart.

September 15, 2025.

Adriana