The minutes passed.
Or the hours.
Or misshapen eternities.
Time, here, no longer had a skeleton. It didn't flow — it stagnated, it rotted in place. Each second seemed to stretch to the point of implosion, to deform like a droplet suspended in infinity, ready to fall but never quite. There was no rhythm. No marker. Nothing to say whether the moment was moving forward or whether I was looping, frozen in a dead supplication.
Maybe I wasn't really here anymore.
Maybe I wasn't even me anymore.
Maybe I had become that in-between: that body stranded on memoryless ash, that scream turned into breath, that gaze emptied of intention.
A heartbeat without a heart.
A breath without flesh.
A remnant.
My weeping continued.
Without strength. Without defense. A dirty, exhausted trickle, more reflex than pain. I didn't cry like a man anymore. I cried because it was all there was left to do. Because my body hadn't yet understood that there was nothing left to wait for.
