Tahlia
Iforgot how light feels.
Not the artificial kind, not the bulb overhead that never flickers, never dims—just stays on like an insult, like a constant reminder that time passes differently here.
I mean sunlight.
The kind that doesn’t burn unless you need it to, the kind that warms skin instead of scorching it.
The kind I don’t know if I’ll ever see again.
There’s a clock on the wall, mounted in an ornate frame that probably cost more than my entire life before this.
Not that it matters anymore.
It ticked for the first few days, until I threw a pillow at it and knocked the battery loose in a fit of rage I barely remember. Now it just stares at me, dead and smug, hands frozen at some arbitrary time, like it knows something I don’t. Like it’s keeping a time I’m not invited to follow anymore.
The silence isn’t quiet the way silence should be.
It whispers.
His voice is still everywhere, embedded in the walls, woven into the very air I breathe.
“Toys don’t get to speak unless spoken to.”
“I like you better when you’re trembling.”
“You break so beautifully.”
Sometimes I press my palms to my ears and scream just to hear something that isn’t him—but even then, it’s still him underneath everything. Underneath my voice. Underneath my breath. Underneath my skin like he’s been tattooed into my DNA.
I want to hate him.
I do hate him.
But it’s getting harder to remember where the hate ends and the want begins, harder to find the line that separates the two emotions.
I’m scared of what that means because the mirror is still shattered, a spiderweb of cracks spreading from the impact point.
The chair is still in pieces, velvet torn and wood splintered.
And I haven’t spoken aloud in…
God, I don’t even know how long it’s been.
Not since I threw the necklace.
Not since I pressed my forehead to the cold tile and pretended I could disappear into it, become part of the architecture.
Not since he ran in here, tore the glass from my hand with that look on his face I’ve never seen before, and told me I didn’t get to leave him.
Not even in death.
And I hate him.
I do.
But not enough to want him gone.
Because now, I sit in this room, alone, and my chest aches in this deep, animal way I don’t know how to fix.
I want him to come back.
To yell.
To smirk.
To grab me by the chin and say something cruel enough that I’ll cry again—just so I can remember what my voice sounds like when it isn’t trapped inside my head, echoing in the empty spaces.
Because if he doesn’t come back…
I don’t know what’s left of me.
My fingers shake when I lift the broken locket from the floor where it’s been lying since I threw it.
It’s not delicate anymore. The chain is kinked in three places, and the clasp is bent at a sharp angle that would slice my neck open if I tried to wear it again—but I hold it anyway, tight enough that the edge bites into the soft meat of my palm.
I welcome the sting. It’s the first thing I’ve felt that’s real all day, maybe all week.
I don’t cry. Not now. That part of me is bruised and spent, wrung dry from nights I can’t remember and hours that loop like punishment, repeating endlessly. But there’s something worse than crying. Something slower. Something more dangerous.
Wanting.
I press my forehead to the wall, cold concrete that smells like stale dust and expensive soap.
I think if I stay here long enough—just like this, perfectly still—I’ll stop wanting.
That my body will forget the shape of his voice, the weight of his stare, the heat of his breath behind my ear when he says things no man should say and means every syllable like a fucking prayer.
I don’t even know how he does it.
I don’t know how he took a girl like me and made me feel more alive when he’s hurting me than I ever did when I was safe, when I had freedom and choices and a life that was mine.
The silence returns, thick and pressing like humidity before a storm. The locket cuts deeper into my skin. I close my eyes and whisper his name, just once. It slips out without my permission, unbidden. It tastes like blood and copper.
He doesn’t come.
And maybe that’s worse than anything he’s actually done to me because if he walked in now, I wouldn’t scream. I wouldn’t fight. I wouldn’t even beg.
I’d break for him. Just to hear him say I was his again.
I sink to the floor and pull my knees to my chest, making myself small.
My hands shake harder now—not from fear, not from cold.
From the ache. The absence. The fact that I think I miss him more than I ever missed anyone, and that makes me feel disgusting in ways I can’t cleanse from my skin no matter how hard I scrub.
But this is what he wanted, isn’t it?
To make me need him like this.
To make me hunger for his cruelty.
To ruin me so completely I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
Maybe I was always meant to belong to a monster.
And maybe, just maybe, I want to.