TODAY, I WOKE before the sun. The fire inside my chest—the fire that had licked at my bones for days, leaving me writhing and begging in silence—was finally gone.
But the absence of it didn’t bring peace. Only a hollow ache.
I pressed a hand to my sternum. No heat. No burn. Just skin slick with dried sweat and the faint echo of where something had bloomed inside me and then retreated. I should’ve been relieved. I should’ve wept in gratitude. Instead, I sat in bed and stared at the window, at the bruised sky bleeding orange and gray, and felt like something had been taken from me.
The heat was gone. The pull remained.
And that, somehow, was worse.
Knowing that I had ridden whatever sickness I had inside of me, but still, that forbidden thing was inside of me, resting, sleeping, waiting
