pillow biter

i understand now that decay is not the opposite of performance but its final, stripped form. when memory dissolves, when the narrative collapses, what remains is not some purified essence but raw, wordless dependency. i reach for a hand i no longer name, comforted by warmth i cannot credit to history. the audience has left, the cameras are off, and still my body insists on its attachments. i find this neither tragic nor beautiful—merely factual. the self that performed love so meticulously has exited the building, yet my fingers keep grasping. senility exposes the embarrassing truth: love was never a choice, never a meaning, never a story. it was always just biology wearing my face, and now the face is gone, and biology continues without it, indifferent to whether i ever understood what was happening to me.