WeibaSan

With you and Bolt, I am whole. And right now I'm walking through my days with that wholeness ripped clean out of me, forced to function like it doesn't hurt.

I can't smell him anymore, that warm, familiar smell that means home. I can't sink my hands into his fur, I can't look into his eyes and feel like I'm looking at everything I have ever wanted. I can't watch him do something which he is absolutely not allowed to and feel my heart melt anyway, powerless against how much I adore him.

I want one more lazy morning in the warmth of my sister's side, with Bolt curled up right beside my bed. I let my hand fall over the edge and feel his fur, soft and fluffy under my fingers, like it always is. I get up slowly, do my little chores, then flop back down next to my sister. We scroll through the dumbest, laziest reels and laugh at things that aren't even that funny. Then I ask her if she wants coffee, and I make it just how she likes it, and mine the same way, because that's just how we do it. We sit there for a while, just us and the coffee and the quiet.

Then we go to the gym together, but not before spoiling Bolt with treat after treat like he's the one leaving, not us. We talk about our crushes for the thousandth time, the same jokes, the same lines, and somehow it never gets old. We play badminton doubles and laugh so hard we keep missing the shots and losing anyway. We come home, eat dinner together, do the chores all over again, and feed Bolt. We take him for his walk, slip him a few more treats he definitely doesn't need, and fall asleep close to each other, like nothing in the world could ever pull us apart.

And I want to wake up the next day and see Bolt still there in our room, and feel that same small rush of happiness, like it's the first time all over again.

But I know that's not how it goes. Not tomorrow.

You cried on my chest today. For the first time. And I held you so tight, wanting to cry just as badly, trying so hard not to, because I didn't want you to feel anything but safe in my arms. I never wanted to let go. I still don't. You're my little baby. My little sister. My heart walking outside of my body. All I have ever want, all I will ever want in this life, is to see you happy. Always. Every single day. I love you more than I will ever find the words for, and it hurts so much to even think about not being right there beside you. I don't want to leave you. I don't want to walk away and leave you behind with these people, without me, without my arms around you when you need them. I want to be there. Every time. Every moment you need me I want to already be there, holding you, protecting you, keeping you safe the way you deserve to be kept. Please know that. Please always know that.

And you, Bolt. My baby. How do I even begin. Your fur, so soft under my hands. Your smell that I would know anywhere, that makes everything feel okay just by being close to it. The way you look at me with those sleepy eyes in the morning like I'm your whole world and you're mine. The way you manipulate me so shamelessly and so perfectly and I fall for it every single time because I would rather fall for it a thousand times than ever say no to you. Your excitement over the word walk. Your tantrums. Your warmth pressed against me. How am I supposed to live without any of that. How am I supposed to wake up and reach for you and you're not there. I don't know how to do that. I genuinely do not know how to do that. Why does it have to be this way. Why do I have to miss you like this when all I want is to have you close, always close, always mine.

to fall to pieces

in your arms

because I know

that even if I do,

even if the shattered edges

pierce you,

you will still

hold me tight.

Let me turn to fragments

in your embrace.

Let me be a wreck,

a ruin,

undone and trembling

in the shelter of your hands.

Let me dissolve

into the space between

your fingers

let me scatter,

let me bleed

into the dark

of you.

Just let me

become nothing

your desire

until I no longer

see myself.

Until my insanity

no longer bothers me.

Until the mad dog

inside me

gets used to

the tenderness.

Hold me until

the flames burning

me up cease to.

Swallow me whole

before I do it

to my oldest friend

and I run to her,

already on the edge

of falling apart.

I let myself go,

collapsing into her arms,

surrendering to the cold

that somehow still feels

like comfort.

It has been minutes.

It has been years.

And still she is unchanged,

the same quiet grip,

the same hollow warmth

that knows me better

than I know myself.

I have tried to leave her.

I have walked toward noise,

toward light,

toward people who smiled

with their whole faces

but she always waited.

Patient. Certain.

Knowing I would return.

And I always do.

Because the truth

I have carried longest

is the one I never say out loud,

that loneliness is not something

I am passing through.

She is not a season.

She is not a wound

that will one day close.

She is the one

who never leaves.

The one who stays

when everything else goes quiet.

My oldest friend.

My only constant.

The city lights from thirty thousand feet were something I was wholly unprepared for. Beautiful in a way that punched through the chest. But beauty is an unstable thing at altitude. Within moments they shifted into colonies of pale insects swarming through a darkness too vast to name. My stomach turned. I had to look away.

Then dawn arrived the way it does up there, without asking.

An ocean of cloud stretched beneath the plane and something irrational moved through me, the feeling that if I simply stepped out, I would not fall. I would walk. All the way to wherever the sun was being born.

The clouds looked like cotton candy torn apart by gentle hands and left to drift. So offensively tender that the eyes struggled to file them under real. I wanted to fall into them and let them hold me.

By the time the sun had fully risen, they had become a continent of snow suspended in the air, as if the world had decided that gravity was optional up here.

Today I went to a flour mill with my sister and the owner was chatting with us. She said something that will stay in my mind for long, long years. "If one of you marries, it's gonna be so hard on the other one. You're always so inseparable." I will be moving to another city for my masters. And I hate growing up, because now I have to live without my sister, sleep without my sister, eat without my sister, and breathe without my sister.

It always seemed like there was so much time before any of this would happen. Now it is happening, and it will not stop hurting. We may fight every single day, but she and Bolt are the only reason I keep carrying on, the only reason I do not give up. They are my whole world. And how am I supposed to live away from my whole world?

I do not want to wake up and find her not sleeping beside me. I do not want to go to sleep with no one to rest my leg on. I wish all of this was just an illusion. Growing up, making money, leaving. All just an illusion. I wish it was just a bad dream, this leaving, this living without her. But it is going to be real, and I cannot stop it.

I love her more than I will ever love anyone. I love her and Bolt the most. They are my whole world, and now I am supposed to live without them.

And the jagged pieces of my ruins,

Dancing on my crushing veins

Fist clenched,

Throat choked

By my own hands,

Strangling the destruction

That trails behind the words

Ripping through my vocal cords.

Where does this frenzy

Of mine get buried?

Where do they hide a storm

That refuses a grave?

How do I extinguish

This berserk state of my mind?

Which fire station

Would dare quench

This raging inferno

Born inside bone?

Who comes

When the sirens are in my skull

And the flames wear my name?

I will burn

And burn in my own raging fire

Until the fire devours,

Every last breath from my lungs,

And nothing remains of me

But gray ashes.

the moon anymore,

she rises like a memory

that refuses to open.

I look at her

and do not feel

she knows me,

as if my name was

a scar her light

has healed over.

She feels like

a stranger,

a familiar road

that no longer leads home.

I don't talk to

her anymore;

my silence no longer

finds its echo in her.

She doesn't look

at me with familiarity,

her gaze passes through

like pale shrapnel,

and neither do I.

We miss each other

by inches of light.

I don’t know

when her light forgot my name,

or when my eyes learned

to look past the familiar,

the way one survives

by unlearning touch.

She has always worn

a thousand faces,

thinning, breaking, returning,

a body fluent in loss,

and I knew each one

the way tides know the pull,

by instinct,

by ache,

by staying.

But now I stand beneath her

like a misplaced shadow,

a remainder without a sum,

wondering if the distance

is written in her craters

or carved behind my ribs,

where recognition used to live.

Did she change,

or did I lose the language

that once translated her glow,

the alphabet of light

my bones believed in.

All I know is this,

something between us slipped

out of orbit,

without noise, without warning,

and neither of us remembers

who let go first,

only that the sky

no longer answers

leak from my eyes,

water without salt,

tears without pain.

I lie beneath an

empty ceiling,

white with erased memories,

watching it stare back

with the same emptiness as mine.

Empty walls listen

but never answer.

Empty books sit open,

their pages breathing dust,

stories that once held me

now refusing to speak.

I have stopped

feeling.

Not numb,

just absent,

as if something essential

quietly left

and forgot to return.

My heart has turned

into a thing without edges,

something that cannot be cut,

cannot be chipped,

cannot become anything at all.

Or maybe

even my heart is hollow,

a shell that learned

how to sound full

when touched.

Empty heart.

Empty brain,

thoughts walking in circles,

forgetting why they began.

Empty room.

Empty home,

where my name echoes

and comes back unfamiliar.

Empty world,

wide and distant,

as if I am living

a life I lived before

and already forgot.

I do not know

what is happening to me.

I only know that

when I look inward,

I do not recognize

and so did the clouds.

I am different now.

They recognized me.

Even to myself,

I am a stranger.

I don’t love coffee anymore.

People close to me

feel like strangers.

The air smells different.

As if something was wiped clean,

not broken, not torn,

just quietly erased.

My memories feel thin,

like fog where rooms used to be.

I move through days

I know I have lived before,

two years ago,

wearing the same hours,

the same mornings,

but not the same heart.

I am hollow,

and nothing answers inside me.

Nothing ended.

Nothing began.

Things continued,

but without recognition.

Life moved on in a language

I no longer understand.

I stepped into the days

without memory of their shape,

without knowing

And it is strange, because they are not even the ones at fault. It is me. I am the one forcing myself to match what they see in me, and then crying about how heavy it feels. I am the one crushing myself under the pressure. I am tired of it. Tired of expectations. Tired of being seen as someone who can do great things when right now I feel like I cannot do anything at all. I just want to stop. Rest. Breathe without feeling guilty.

I am tired, moon. I am tired in a way that feels old. I sometimes wish I never had any potential at all. No one would look at me with hope, and I would not feel like I am disappointing anyone. Take me away, moon. I want to disappear for a while. Turn invisible, like the snow leopards hiding in the mountains. Silent, soft, unseen. Maybe that is why I love them. They blend into the world until they almost do not exist. I want to be like that. Hard to find. Easy to forget.

Some days I lose myself completely. I forget why I am alive, what I am doing, where I am going. Everything feels hollow. I feel numb most of the time, except for the moments when the numbness breaks and a few tears escape without warning. Why do I feel so lost, moon. Why does everything feel so hopeless. There is a deep empty space inside my chest, and no matter what I do, it does not go away.

Tears slip down both sides of my face, but inside I feel nothing. Just this strange emptiness I can’t explain. I don’t know what is happening to me. I don’t know how I ended up curled under this blanket when I’m not even cold. I just wanted something soft because I wanted to feel held, even if it was only by fabric.

And again I think about how much I wish I had a dad. Someone who would sit with me while I climb out of the hole I made for myself. Someone who doesn’t need to fix anything, just be there. Just tell me everything will be alright because he’s here and that his presence alone is enough to make the world stop shaking for a second.

Then more tears fall because there’s this huge empty space in my chest. I do have a father, but I never had a dad. And I don’t blame him. I was the one who stepped away. I was the one who built that distance. And still, I cry wanting something I pushed away without even realizing it.

But then I stop and wonder what I did wrong. What I didn’t do. I was just a little girl who wanted her dad to hold her when she cried. I was just a little girl who wanted to feel safe. But I never did. And now I keep asking myself why. Why didn’t I deserve that. Why didn’t I get that simple comfort every child should get without having to earn it.

why am I still alive

and why are you

still circling this tired earth

like a quiet guardian

who never learned to stop.

Why do you return

night after night

even when your light is thin

as a weak thread.

You still show up.

And I still fail to.

Why do I slip back

into that small girl again

the one who learned

to carry storms in her hands

the one who folded her hurt

like old letters

and kept them hidden

because no arms ever reached

to hold her still.

Why is she always

wiping her own tears

as if she is cleaning rain

off a window

that no one looks through.

Why did she never get

a warm shoulder

a soft voice

a safe place to rest

even once in her life.

And when comfort finally comes

why does she move away

like a scared bird

expecting every open hand

to break her wings.

Tell me, moon

because tonight

as your pale light shakes

across my room

I cannot help feeling

that the fault lives in me.

Maybe something inside

is cracked in a way

that refuses to heal.

Maybe something