Sometimes I still feel her. The girl who tried to hold everything together. She lingers like smoke in a room long after the fire’s gone out. She doesn’t haunt me out of malice, but memory. A reminder of what it felt like to love until it hurt, and to stay until it broke. There are nights I swear I hear her breathing in the silence, the echo of a heartbeat that once lived for someone else. I can almost see her, sitting in the dark, waiting for the sound of footsteps that meant

In the beginning, I didn’t see it for what it was. I thought it was love. The attention, the way he wanted to know where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing. It almost felt flattering. To my younger self, it looked like care. It looked like passion. It looked like proof that I mattered to him. But the first time love felt like control, something shifted inside me. It was a small moment, one that might not have seemed significant to anyone else. A sharp comment about w

I didn’t notice it at first. The quiet. The way the air between us sometimes felt heavy even when you were smiling. It was so subtle, it...