LOOP VII: ashfall

I close my eyes and memories return—every time you died inside trying a thousand different ways to stay with each of them. 

I pretended it didn’t matter… until I saw you with her.

I was lost in that bar, disoriented. 

When I saw you, I was standing in a corner, watching as you kissed her, held her, took her home… and I stayed there.

The final song begins to play. Orange light spills across the bar like the last glow of a dying flame, and for a moment everything feels strangely calm.

I think about everything this night carried: longing, sadness, anger, confusion. And I realize something important.

I could let all of this turn me bitter. I could carry this pain like a weapon.

But I don’t want to become someone hardened by a story that was never truly mine.

So I let the night end. I let the ashes settle.

And somewhere beneath the ruins of what I once thought I wanted, I feel something small but real beginning to grow: the quiet decision to move forward without hate.

Because sometimes healing doesn’t look like victory.

Sometimes it simply looks like choosing not to burn again.