Even the Splinters Have Song
after the forgetting, the remembering returns stranger than before
At first, you think it’s fatigue. Some bland, functional exhaustion like jet lag from having to pretend to be someone digestible for too long. But no, this is topographical. The furniture’s in the same place. The dog, if you have one, still thumps its tail against the wall with stupid devotion. But something’s off. Something vacated the air. Some crucial syntax, vanished. And now your own name tastes like aspirin.
You sit inside your own life, and it creaks like a bad prosthetic.
No one else notices. The world keeps spinning like a busted microwave carousel. Your coworkers still send you smiley face emojis. Your ex’s favorite band releases a new album, and somehow, they’re still making songs about summers that never actually happened.
But everything inside your skin feels like drywall.
The joy, formerly available in technicolor, now arrives muted taupe joy. A joy wearing orthopedic shoes. You reach for it anyway, out of habit, like a person checking the fridge twelve times an hour not because they’re hungry, but because hope’s got muscle memory.
The compliments start to ache. They show up wearing all their usual sequins but feel counterfeit. They carry the same old cadence God, even your childhood nickname might come out, but the substance has curdled. It’s the sonic equivalent of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth.
Someone says, “You’ve always been the strong one.”
You nod.
But deep in the marrow, something whimpers,
Oh, hell no. Not this again.
You press your ear against the wall of your own history
and it does not echo.
It wheezes.
Then there’s the craving.
It wakes you before the birds.
It has no shape, no taxonomy.
Not sex. Not sugar. Not clean sheets or sound baths or motherfucking oat milk lattes.
Just this ancient, aching throb in your diaphragm,
like a prayer that’s been doing pushups in the dark.
And this, of course, is the real horror.
Not the suffering that part’s almost quaint by now.
The real horror is the part where you understand
that meaning does not automatically regenerate.
There’s no philosophical Advil for this.
No “Five Ways to Fall Back in Love with Your Life” listicle can plug the hole in your soul where your own sense of mattering used to live.
This is not collapse.
Collapse, at least, gets a soundtrack.
This is quieter. More bureaucratic.
And here it comes the big moment.
Not with grandeur. Not with flash.
No angel descends with a trumpet.
No therapist sends a perfectly timed text.
Instead, you stand in your kitchen
barefoot,
half-robed,
mouth tasting like pennies and defiance,
and you whisper to the floor:
“Fine. I’m still here.”
No applause.
The cat blinks at you with contempt.
Still, the coffee brews.
You gather.
Not because you’re noble.
Not because you’re ready.
Because that’s what your body does now.
It assembles.
It rearranges.
You find a splinter of purpose beneath the radiator.
You find a memory still breathing in the pocket of your old coat.
You find a version of yourself, cracked, limping, swearing like a sailor
still clutching the hammer.
You do not draft a plan.
You do not host a vision board night.
You do not “manifest.”
You just begin.
With bruised palms.
With the leftover language of someone who once believed in constellations.
With your grandmother’s laugh still hiding in your kneecaps.
You build with grief as mortar.
You build with songs you can no longer sing but still remember in your bones.
You build with the nail you once pulled from your own palm
when no one else noticed you were bleeding.
And not out of redemption.
God no.
Redemption is a toddler with sticky fingers,
always asking for more than it gives.
You build because something still pulses.
Some rogue frequency,
some basement-dwelling rhythm in your wrists
says, we’re not done.
The ghosts gather.
They bring folding chairs.
They mutter,
We didn’t think you’d make it.
You shrug.
You don’t explain.
They wouldn’t get it.
You hammer badly.
You cry sideways.
You break your own rules and glue them back together with spit and metaphysics.
You do not call it healing.
You call it Tuesday.
But somewhere,
between the bent screws
and the coffee gone cold,
you hear it.
Low.
Persistent.
Irreverent as hell.
Even the splinters have song.
And damn it
so do you.