I Know How This Feels

There is a strange emptiness now.

Not the emptiness
of something missing,

but the emptiness
after something
has stopped pulling.

I thought there would be more alarm.

More craving.
More panic.
More reaching.

Instead,

I am here.

Four days without food.
Three days without smoke.
And somehow
the world has become very quiet.

Maybe I thought
I could not bear this.

The absence.
The uncertainty.
The space
where something familiar used to be.

Maybe that was the old belief:

I cannot hold this.

But look—

I am holding it.

Without filling it.
Without smoking over it.
Without immediately running back
to make something right.

And then there is us.

Nervous system
meeting nervous system.

Words becoming accusations.
Questions becoming defence.
Pain becoming evidence.

Me trying to explain
the whole sentence

while only fragments
are being heard.

Trying to find
the doorway back to each other

until my body finally says,

No.

Not because I cannot love.

Not because I cannot feel.

Not because I cannot stay
with something difficult.

I simply know
how this feels.

I know what happens
when I remain inside it
too long.

My body knows
before my mind admits it.

First the tightening.

Then the fire.

Then the reaction.

Then nothing.

The great shutting down.

The sinking into bed
after the battle,

as though every cell whispers:

Enough.

And perhaps this emptiness
is not asking me
to understand anything.

Perhaps there is
no new teaching here.

Nothing more
to dissect.

Nothing more
to repair tonight.

Perhaps my body
has already understood.

And what feels empty
is simply the space

where I am no longer
fighting,

explaining,

regulating,

proving,

or returning.

I don't know yet
what will grow here.

I don't know
what comes next.

But for once,

I don't need
to fill the silence.

I can let it be empty.

I can let myself
not know.

And beneath all that quiet,

almost too softly to notice,

something in me
is still here.

Breathing.

Unoccupied.

Mine.