Page 86 of Hollowed

The woman who took me in said nothing when I didn’t come to breakfast.

She knocked once.

Left a bowl of soup.

A piece of bread.

A ribbon tied loosely around the edge of a folded note with nothing written inside.

Not red.

Not stained.

Just clean.

That was the part that broke me.

I untied it and set it on the floor like it burned.

Then I drank the soup.

It was warm.

But not sacred.

It didn’t taste like silence soaked in restraint.

It didn’t carry the weight of his breath.

It filled my stomach.

But not the ache.

I chewed the bread slowly. It was soft in the center. Crisp at the edges. The kind of food that means survival.

But I didn’t want survival.

I wanted something brutal.

Something holy.

Something that left a mark.

I stared out the window for a long time after that.

The grass moved in soft waves.

The sky bled blue and gold.

Birds called each other by names I no longer remembered.

And all of it felt like a world that belonged to someone else.

Because the only thing I remembered was him.

His hands. His mouth. The way he looked at me when I saiddon’t stop.The way he pressed my wrists together like they were scripture. The way his silence bent time.

The way I left him kneeling, and he didn’t rise.

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