The watch is gone. I let it slip, let the gears and the ticking go to hell because time doesn’t mean a damn thing when you’re drifting. I let the sun bake me and the wind raw my face until the days just ran together like cheap wine on a tablecloth. I had this heart, see? Wrapped in armor. Cold, hard, and useless. I wasn’t living; I was just occupying space.

Then came the mistake. A classic one.

I put my head on his shoulder. He started talking, soft, low words about music, and the melodies started pouring in, filling up the cracks. It felt good for a second, but you can’t hold the ocean in your hands. Try it. The waves just eat away at you. They eroded the steel I’d built up until there was nothing left but raw nerves.
We found a spot outside the grind, a place where the world finally looked the way I wanted it to. Just us under the black sheet of the sky and the cold light of dead stars. We were like all the other fools, tangled up, counting seconds like they were worth something, trying to hide in the silence.

But stars don’t just sit there. They’re gas and fire, trying like hell to explode, to scatter themselves across the nothingness. How are we supposed to understand that kind of violence?

Then it happened. My star didn’t explode; it just walked. Right through the door and into the night, leaving a hole where the heat used to be.

©️ Beatriz Esmer