I didn’t sleep.
I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, watching shadows crawl and shift as cars passed outside, as the moon slid slowly across the sky. Every time I closed my eyes, my chest tightened like something was clamping down on my ribs from the inside. My body kept expecting morning to reset everything. To undo it. To give me a version of the world where my dad was still alive.
But grief doesn’t work like that.
I turned onto my side. Then my other side. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, kicked it down again, twisted the pillow, hugged it, shoved it away. My sheets felt wrong. My room felt wrong. My own skin felt wrong, like I didn’t fit inside myself anymore.
The silence was the worst part.
Not the peaceful kind. The heavy, listening kind. The kind that pressed against m
