Fading

I ventured beyond the confines of my own sorrow yesterday, surrounded by the hum of companionship, the weight of shared laughter, the simplicity of existence untethered from you. And for the first time, you did not consume me. Hours passed, unburdened by your specter, until the realization struck—a hollow, gnawing guilt, coiling itself around my ribs like a phantom of obligation.

It was not remorse, nor yearning, nor some desperate plea to rewind time. It was the quiet devastation of forgetting. As though the fragments of us, once so vivid, had disintegrated into nothingness, slipping through my grasp like ash on the wind. I had not mourned you. I had not even noticed your absence. And in that, I felt cruel, faithless—though not regretful, not sorrowful, only unsettled by the ease of it all.

Would you grieve my departure from this anguish? Would it unsettle you to know I am slipping from the grasp of my own affliction? Or was I always the only one lingering at the precipice, suspended in hesitation, wondering if surrendering to oblivion is merely another way of losing you all over again?