A Thank You to Hell

The minutes passed.

Or the hours.

Or misshapen eternities.

Time, here, no longer had a skeleton. It didn't flow — it stagnated, it rotted in place. Each second seemed to stretch to the point of implosion, to deform like a droplet suspended in infinity, ready to fall but never quite. There was no rhythm. No marker. Nothing to say whether the moment was moving forward or whether I was looping, frozen in a dead supplication.

Maybe I wasn't really here anymore.

Maybe I wasn't even me anymore.

Maybe I had become that in-between: that body stranded on memoryless ash, that scream turned into breath, that gaze emptied of intention.

A heartbeat without a heart.

A breath without flesh.

A remnant.

My weeping continued.