Mujer Contra Mujer

Content Warning: This essay discusses sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, victim-blaming, and family trauma. Some sections may be emotionally difficult to read. Please take care of yourself while reading.

Author’s Note: This essay reflects on inherited blame, maternal wounds, and the impossible work of loving someone without carrying what belongs to them.

Cuando le dije a mi madre
(when I told my mother)

pensé
(I thought)

que me iba a abrazar
(that she would hold me)

esta vez
(this time)

Pero volteó la cara

e hizo un tsk con los dientes,

tan decepcionada de mí.

Y en pocas palabras me dijo

que era mi culpa otra vez…

Like so many things had been my fault throughout my life.

My dad cheating on her. The abuse I survived as a child. The priest who crossed a line he never should have crossed. All of it. Somehow, all of it had been me.

Except this time, I stood up.

This time, I realized it was not me. I was looking directly at what was to blame.

Or maybe not what.

Maybe where.

For a long time, I blamed my dad. Not entirely, not simply, because even that is not clean. My dad and I have been sitting outside for our balcony smoke sessions for a couple of years now, and lately he has started looking back at his life: his childhood, his family, the way he treated us, the way he raised us, the way he was raised, and how all of that may have shaped the whole dynamic.

A few days ago, he called it una mancha on the family.

A stain.

He said it almost like a curse, like something placed on us. But the truth is, what my dad was naming was a long line of trauma. A long line of hurt people who kept hurting other people. And inside some of those hurt people, there were good people trying to make their way out of the loop, not knowing how, so they continued it instead.

It is painful. It is sad. You can see them trying not to repeat the same malice through their children, but they fail. Then the same wish repeats and repeats, hoping someone will somehow get it right in the next round.

But that is not how it works.

You are not supposed to get it right in the next round. You are supposed to get it right with you.

And that was the message my mother, my father, my grandparents, and their parents never quite understood. That is why all of this is so sloppy. The good is never quite where it is supposed to be, and the malice spills through to us.

As I tried telling my mother that my father was part of the reason I had ended up in the situations I had been in, she looked at me and shook her head no.

I remember that head shake. Always in my father’s defense. It was that same defense that always put him before her children. She never quite understood how dangerous that was. Neither did I, not fully. But as I got older, and now, in what feels like my final, most painful awakening lesson, I saw that the problem was not only him.

That was the part I had not understood until then.

My father may have taught me fear, but my mother taught me how to explain it away. He was the violence. She was the permission. Not because she wanted to hurt me. Not because she did not love me. But because she had been trained to survive by protecting the man who hurt her.

And somehow, that became my inheritance.

As she sat there telling me, “I told you to defend yourself,” and “I never would have let that happen to me,” she defended my father again.

She defended the same man whose violence had shaped our home. The same man whose anger taught us how to shrink, how to listen for danger, how to make ourselves smaller before the room could break open. The same man who hurt her and still somehow remained the person we were expected to love, respect, and protect.

I had to love this man. I had to respect this man. I had to carry the weight of what he did to her, too.

Even as a child, I became part of their marriage. I became the witness. The messenger. The one who knew too much. The one who said something and was blamed for what saying something revealed.

My fault.

I still do not know how to ride a bike. And now, with an inner-ear problem, it is a little harder.

Years later, when I would tell her what happened to me as a child, she would say, “Well, who told you to be alone with him? I told you never to be alone with him.” As if telling me never to play with boys would have stopped me from playing with people my age. As if a child should have known how to protect herself from people she trusted.

You can tell a little girl not to go upstairs with a boy. You can warn her. You can make rules. You can call that protection.

But when you teach that same little girl to accept abuse from her father, you are teaching her something louder than the warning.

You are teaching her to stay.

You are teaching her to doubt herself.

You are teaching her that love and fear can live in the same room, and that if something happens to her inside that room, she should ask herself what she did wrong before she asks who hurt her.

Even after growing up, even after fixing and reframing that, a part of me will still ask the question: Am I the reason? Is it me? And I will always be apologizing for shit men do. Always.

And they will begin to allow it. They have. I have allowed things to happen that, in most situations, I would have stopped. Because I have been afraid to do something. Because I am afraid of what will happen to me. Because I have always been afraid.

I have seen what happens to the door. I have heard what happened to my brothers. I have seen what happens to me. And as rebellious, as loud, as violent as I can be, I am still that little girl. Scared. Frozen. Unmoving. Afraid of what will happen if I scream.

I raised my voice and said, “I’m starting to see maybe you’re part of the reason too. You’re always defending his actions when you should be on the side of your children.”

And then she said what she always says when talking about us:

“I let you live your lives. What you do is your doing.”

I used to hear that as distance. Now I hear it as defense.

It is the kind of sentence that tries to take responsibility off the speaker and place it gently, almost politely, onto the child. As if freedom and abandonment cannot sometimes wear the same face. As if letting us “live our lives” meant we had been protected inside them.

Anyone who knew us growing up would have called my mother overprotective. But she was not exactly protective. She was strict. Paranoid. Performative in the way fear can become performative when it does not know how to become care.

We were not free. We were caged indoors and told it was love.

The worst part is knowing she did want to be there in some form. She did try. But she was never shown how to be emotionally giving or nurturing. She had been taught to mother entirely too young.

She never got to be a kid. She was a mother, a servant, a cook, a seamstress. She was her mother at the ripe age of three or four. A child does not know how to be a mother. A child barely knows how to be a child. Children learn how to be by being, and she never got to.

She molded herself by others and never fully experienced self-expression or freedom. So when she finally came into her own motherhood, she “let us live our lives,” but we did not really go to parks. We rarely went to museums with the family unless it was through school. We had a curfew that was basically: get out of school and come straight home. Not one sleepover. It was weird.

You would swear we were hiding something. And yeah, we were. We were hiding an abusive family. Turns out my childhood friend A was right.

But none of us were aware of it. Not even my mother. To us, this was normal. This was everyday life. This was how you were supposed to be raised, right?

Then, when we were in Colombia, the rules changed. The cage loosened. Family became safety because family was supposed to be safety.

But things happened there.

And when they did, the blame still found me.

Not the adults who may or may not have been watching. Not the people who caused harm. Not the family history that made harm so easy to hide.

Me.

A six-year-old girl.

“No, mami. That does not work,” I said. “Not for this.”

Then she started to say, “So I’m a terrible mother. I can’t do anything right.”

I began to feel the rage come up inside me, but it was not just my rage. I felt her sister’s rage. My great-aunt’s rage. And inside all of it, I could feel my abuelita, her mother. A different emotion altogether. A feeling of having failed somewhere. Missed something. Where did they go wrong for her to treat me this way? I did not have the answers because I was too busy about to yell at my mother.

“Not now, mami.”

I got up and started walking away. My mother started hitting herself on the chest and said, “Well then, just stone me for being a terrible mother!”

I swear you could almost hear her sister’s spirit fill the room, because the ENOUGH was that loud. It vibrated in my body, in everything at that moment.

“Do NOT make this about you when your daughter just told you she was raped!” I said, as I walked out of the room and then out of the apartment with my brother, breathing heavily, gasping, reaching for air.

The disrespect I felt that day is something my mother may never understand.

She may think it was only me she hurt, but in that room, I did not feel alone. I felt the women before us pressing against the walls. Her mother. Her sister. My great-aunt. Elders from our pasts I had never known, all of them watching this same wound repeat itself in another body.

I wondered what they would have said to her.

I wondered if they had ever been blamed for what was done to them.

I wondered where the first woman dropped the ball, and how many daughters had been forced to bend down and pick it up.

Later that evening, my brother volunteered as tribute and tried to mediate a conversation between my mother and me.

He wanted to see if anything could be repaired.

But I do not think repair was possible that night. Not because there was nothing worth saving, but because everything had finally cracked open. There was no putting it back into the shape it had been before.

What had been revealed could not be unrevealed:

I was carrying blame that did not belong to me.

And my mother was carrying blame that did not belong to her, either.

The difference was that I was trying to put mine down.

“You have to realize, mami, what you say has an effect on people,” my brother began.

Almost immediately, before he could finish his next sentence, my mother said, “You are all in charge of your own lives and responsible for your own actions. I’ve done my best. Now I’m treated as a bad mother for saying things.”

We both looked at her and immediately said, “No,” and, “No one said that.”

Then my brother asked the bigger question: “Who said it’s your fault?”

My mother replied, “It has always been my fault. Every time I do something, whose responsibility is it? Mine. Whose fault is it? Mine. When something was done wrong, who would my mother blame? Me. And I would have to figure out a way to fix it. I wasn’t treated like the boys. I wasn’t given chances like everyone else. I always had to do what my mother said, what my father wanted, no matter if it was wrong or right. And they raised me right, and I was grateful for it.”

That was where abuelita dropped the ball. That was the feeling that was not quite the same as the others in the room.

My mother had been living under someone else’s thumb her whole life. She never lived. She wanted to draw, to paint, to design clothing. She never got to. She was so limited. Her creativity was stifled by parents, doctors, priests, nuns, and people who constantly told her she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she shouldn’t. And for all of those reasons, somehow, it was her fault. She grew to resent herself and the people around her, and to believe they were right. That she was right.

I hugged her.

I hugged her tightly.

I hugged her the way she did not hug me that day.

I hugged her the way my abuelita may have wished she had been hugged. The way my bisabuela may have needed to be held. The way all the women before us deserved to be held before somebody taught them that suffering was duty.

I wanted to tell them I loved them. I wanted to tell them I was sorry anyone had made them believe these were truths they had to live by.

None of them deserved it.

None of them deserved to be robbed of youth, innocence, softness, freedom, or the chance to let their dreams flourish.

But I cannot heal them.

I know that now.

As I released my mother, she looked at me and said, “I’m not going to change, you know.”

I sighed and said, “That’s not the point,” and sat down as we continued talking.

A hug does not magically fix generational trauma and roll us to credits. If it were that easy, man, we could fix everyone real quick. No. It was never about that.

I told my mother it was about what she had just said. “I always thought the reason I had been in so many toxic dynamics was because of my dad’s influence. It wasn’t until your nod in defense of him that I realized it was also your staying with him, how you allowed him to be in our lives, how you allowed him to treat us, and how you allowed abusive men around us, that may have influenced how I allow and cope with abusive people in mine.”

I told her, “I think you did it because you didn’t want Dad to be upset with you. You were afraid of what he’d think, and that fear sometimes mattered more than us.”

My brother said nothing. My mother was in denial. And in myself, I felt that maybe this was what my abuelita thought too. Maybe that is what a patriarchal society does at times. It teaches a woman to hold up her husband before her child. To put her man before her child.

And to throw that at such a young little girl, to beat that into such a young little girl, so impressionable and now so unchangeable—I felt terrible.

I understood the hardest loops I had to break out of because I saw a woman who just could not seem to get out of them herself.

By the end of the week, I was walking my mother to the door after taking her to the nail salon. It had been an awkward outing, filled with one-word sentences and sarcastic remarks back and forth. But by the end of it, she had said something in the salon about us to the manicurist, who just so happens to know all our family—small world.

When my mother said, “I just let them live their life,” the manicurist felt, much like me, that it did not hit the way it was supposed to and laughed at it the way you would laugh at a French dark comedy.

“Oh, Ms. Gonzalez,” she said. “You sure do have a way with sayings.”

As I walked with my mother, something got conjured up in me. Not anger. Not sadness. Just acceptance.

“Mami, I know you’re not going to change,” I told her. “I don’t expect you to. And honestly, at this point in your life, I don’t want you to change for me. I want you to live for yourself.”

I wanted her to write the way she wanted to write. Draw the way she wanted to draw. Sing. Dance. Live that vida loca she always says she is living, but truly live it.

“I don’t expect you to change,” I told her. “I expect you to live. And I expect you to accept that you made mistakes as a parent. That is the part you are having such a hard time doing.”

Saying she let us live our lives was her way of putting down a weight she was still carrying. But there were things she needed to carry honestly. Not everything was her fault. Some things were her responsibility.

“Staying with my dad was the worst mistake you ever made,” I said. “And we were worse off for it. You know that. Accept it. I love you.”

I kissed her on the forehead and walked away.

Not Quite Out of The Thicket.

Trigger warning/content note: sexual assault, manipulation, trauma, suicidal ideation, and healing.

Author’s note: This essay comes from a long process of piecing together what my body remembered before I could actually accept and name it. I did not do that alone. I have done it with therapy, family, chosen family, close friends, and time.

I am still in the process of healing. The reason I am sharing this is for the little girl in me who was never able to say anything, and for the thirty-year-old woman who was not able to report it in time. And if this resonates with you, then maybe it’s for you as well.

I know what I can and cannot do with this legally.

But here, at least, I can say it in the present.

Here, at least, I will not be silenced.

L took away the broom, and suddenly it seemed like I could no longer keep anything clean.

Not the floor.

Not the house.

Not the story I had been telling myself.

Everything got so dirty. All my intentions, all the things I had been setting, started falling in on themselves. All the good intentions I had for this place we all lived in. I had been trying to make the house feel better. Safer. More peaceful. More alive. I wanted the energy to change. I wanted everyone to get along. I wanted what had been broken to become something gentler.

“So I’ll get another broom,” I told myself.

But every broom I looked at was wrong.

It had to be that broom.

I didn’t understand why. Not then. I just knew that none of the others fit. None of them had the same bristles. None of them belonged to the house in the same way. None of them held the same intention.

But the truth is, the broom was never the point.

The broom only showed me what I had been trying not to know.

A few months ago, I decided to face the man I had been afraid to name clearly. I thought of it as part of my healing. Some kind of exposure therapy. A way to be respectful. A way to be neighborly. A way to stop letting fear rule the house.

Not because he deserved my softness.

Because I wanted peace.

Because I knew the harm he caused did not come from me. It came from whatever sickness, wound, entitlement, and rot lived in him. I didn’t want or need an apology. I wanted him to sit with himself and learn from himself, the way I was trying to sit with myself and learn from me.

I thought it was going well.

Everything seemed to be coming together.

I had been manifesting good things. I had shaved all my hair off to start fresh. I had told myself I didn’t want any part of him that had touched me. I scrubbed my skin raw in the shower. I got new tattoos. I bought wigs. I dyed my hair. I made cleaning schedules. I started taking care of myself, then the house, then the outside of the house.

I started bringing the healing outward.

I asked if I could plant flowers in the front yard. With permission from the landlord, my brother and I bought beautiful plants, and I began planting them during the weekend. I wanted the house to flourish. I wanted everyone in it to feel something good. Even if I eventually left, I wanted to leave the place better than I found it.

That was the version of me still trying to turn pain into usefulness.

That was the version of me still believing I could cleanse a whole house while lying to myself inside it.

When I saw his car pass, my mind started racing. Should I rush? Should I leave? Should I finish the work the way I normally would — the way I was taught: with good intention, with time, and by letting it flow?

So I stayed.

Eventually, he came out and greeted me.

He had the gall to hug me.

“You know we have our tiffs and all,” he said.

My face twisted.

“Tiffs? Okay.”

I laughed it off because sometimes laughter is the last little bridge between what your body knows and what your mouth is not ready to say.

I invited him to garden with me. I mentioned that I had invited L too, but he had not responded. I said it casually, but I understand now that I have always known how to mention a man when I feel unsafe. Since I was a child, saying a man’s name felt like protection. Like proof that someone else existed near me. Like maybe proximity could make me safer.

But with this man, proximity never protected me.

It only confused me.

He made small comments. Dismissive comments. Comments that sounded casual unless you knew where to look. I know where to look now. I know the difference between a joke and a blade passed gently under the table.

Something that day told me: face him.

Something told me: break the mold.

Not because I should have been alone with him. Not because it was safe. But because some part of me was still trying to understand him. Some part of me wanted everyone here to get along. And that hope did not come from nowhere.

He had mentioned camping.

He had talked about going upstate, about getting away for a weekend, about all of us somehow being in the same place without the sickness underneath it. I could see it like the final frame of a movie: L, my brothers, me, the families, everyone healed, everyone camping, everyone laughing, everyone turning the house into a home.

That was the fantasy he helped place in the room.

The healed version.

The lie I wanted to believe because the truth was too ugly to hold yet.

Before we went to the park, he told me to come inside the apartment. I had not been there in months. I had not even gone in when I came down to thank L for something small that had not felt small to me at all.

I came to thank L for helping me get to work on time, but it turned into thanking him for something much bigger: for helping pull me back to myself. He came to my apartment once when I had been lost for a minute, just chilled for a bit, talking to my brother and me, and that simple act brought me back in a way he probably does not understand. He came in. He gave a damn in his own little way.

And because I had love in me, because I had hope in me, because I had confused endurance with healing more than once in my life, I thought: if I can step into this space and not be sick, maybe I can reclaim something. Maybe I can watch a movie here one day. Maybe I can eat dinner. Maybe I can sit near someone I love without the past choking me.

So I walked in.

I endured.

I felt sick.

I felt scared.

And I held the pressure.

I watched him roll weed, then went upstairs to get ready. I told my brother who I was going out with, just in case, because some part of me knew I was preparing for a battle I was not ready for.

I thought I was walking into clarity.

And I was.

Just not the kind I expected.

We went to the park. He said he liked driving there because no one could see him walking due to workers’ comp. He said he wanted to be somewhere more secluded. He did not tell me to bring a blanket. He brought one seat.

I saw the red flags.

I stayed anyway.

I had my keys. I had my phone. I knew the park well. And that day, I told myself I was not there to talk as much as I was there to listen.

He lit a strain called “Speedy Gonzalez,” and I laughed because of course. Almost kismet. He started talking while watching the volleyball players. He talked about the game, about his life, about how this was his “last summer” because he was leaving in four months.

There it was.

He was leaving.

He was always leaving.

When we first slept together, he said he was leaving. Every time after that, that was the line. He was always going back to Puerto Rico. He was always almost gone. He was always temporary when it was convenient and present when he wanted access.

I clocked the time.

He had told my brother and me in December. Maybe next year. He wasn’t sure. Now, suddenly, it was definitely September.

Something in me was listening differently.

Something in me was finally taking notes.

At one point, I said something I thought was true, but now understand as part of the story I had built to survive him.

“You know I love you, right?”

He looked at me, shaken.

But even that sentence needs context. I had told him before, in Spanish, “Te quiero, como amigo. Te quiero mucho.” I had always meant it that way. As love. As friendship. As love poured into someone I believed was my close friend.

So when I said “te amo,” part of me knew it would throw him off. It was meant to. He was always berating me, saying, “Estás enamorada de mí,” and I knew the phrase would hit his ego somewhere, but also jolt him. Maybe, I thought, it would keep him at bay. But I still meant it from the same place. I meant: I care about you. I have loved you as a friend. You have mattered to me.

But there were also two undeniable truths.

“To be in love, there have to be two people,” I told him, “and you and I are not in love.”

It was something I had always said to him, which I thought would be a clue that I meant it the same way. Between him and me, there were never two people who were in love. There was one person who cared, one person who tried, one person who learned to trust and poured love into a friendship — me. And there was one person who mocked it, insulted it, berated it, and made it something ugly — him.

The other truth was this:

He hurt me devastatingly by telling me the only reason he started being friends with me was for sex. Which means the friendship was just a con. All of a sudden, the way he treated me throughout the years, and particularly after we had sex, made sense.

I mentioned L only to explain the difference. What I felt there was recognition — media naranja — a love that felt whole, whether or not it ever became anything, and I respected it. What I felt with this man was aferrado: clinging, sick passion, attached but not clean.

Maybe that is why every time L came up, the little cuts started.

I had always known how I felt. It could never be more. I gave my trust, my care, my loyalty to a friendship with him. Or so I thought.

The sex was something I had allowed out of trust. Only later was I able to understand those years of trust were years of manipulation.

When he started to explain why it would never work between us, I realized immediately that this outing would be taking an unexpected detour.

I let him reveal himself.

Boy, I wish I hadn’t.

He went on about why he could not love me. Why we were different. Dress styles. Movie styles. Religions. Taste. All of it laid out as if he had ever really tried to know me.

He had not.

We had never gone to see one movie together. I invited him out — to coffee, to walks, to ordinary things friends do when they are trying to know each other better — and he never had the time. I had tried to talk to him about politics, and he low-key told me it was not for women to talk about. I had tried to show him what I liked, and he barely tried to get into it. Even as a friend, he did not try.

And something in me cracked open.

Not because I wanted him.

Because I finally heard him.

And I was free of that sick, clingy poison.

He was telling me, in all his careful little ways, that he had treated me as less than because he saw me as less than. He could soften it. He could dress it up. He could lie through his teeth and say otherwise. But when you do not listen to someone, when you do not give them effort, when you touch their life without honoring their personhood, you have already said what you believe.

The truth is, I am plenty fucking amazing.

The truth is, I am worth everything.

And I am tired of translating someone else’s cruelty into a language that hurts me less.

He talked about L too. Every time L came up, there were comments. Little cuts. He would tell me L did not go out. L did not see people. L would not respond to me anymore. Years before, he had told me similar things. He told me L did not want to see me. He told me not to bother him. He told me L thought I was crazy. He made himself the translator between me and someone I cared about.

I trusted the wrong interpreter.

I trusted him because he stood close to people I loved.

That is one of the hardest truths to hold. I mistook proximity for safety. I thought because he was close to L, close to L’s father, close to the house, close to the story, that he could be trusted with parts of me.

But access is not safety.

Familiarity is not safety.

A man standing near someone you love is still capable of harming you.

For a moment, I thought about calling him a monster throughout this essay because I needed a word big enough for what my body knew before my mouth could say it.

But maybe that gave him too much credit.

He was not a creature from a story. He was not some ancient evil. He was not special.

He was a man.

A man I trusted.

A man who knew how to sound wounded while making me unsafe.

A man who used language, sympathy, trauma, and access to make me doubt myself.

A man who stood close enough to love that I confused him for protection.

And maybe that is the part I have to stop dressing up.

Not because he deserves softness.

Because I deserve clarity.

And that is where it should have ended.

Where it should have ended.

But it didn’t. I was unwell. And I was stuck. Compromised.

And this was right where he wanted me.

Because he wasn’t going to give up unless he tried.

At the park, he told me about his childhood. His heartbreaks. His embarrassments. His traumas. He told me things I know are hard to tell. I know what it means for the body to carry stories it can barely survive speaking.

And still, something in me grew angry.

Not because I had no compassion.

Because I could see where he wanted the story to go.

He let go of my hand because he saw it in my eyes.

I wasn’t buying it.

Still, the child in me wanted to reassure him. I was high. I did not feel well. I was not sure about anything except the old instinct to comfort pain when I saw it. So I leaned in and hugged him. I kissed his forehead.

And then my body remembered something before my mind did.

I moved away quickly.

He laughed and said something sexual. Something vile. Something that turned my compassion into a target.

Who does that?

After saying what he had said?

Who takes a moment of tenderness and makes it unsafe?

I had already told him I was not feeling well while smoking. He knew I was impaired. He knew. And still, he pushed. Still, he watched. Still, he seemed disappointed the outing was not becoming whatever he had imagined it would become.

Near the end of the outing, I kept saying how much clarity I had. I said it was one of the best days of my life because I finally understood him. I went there to sit with my “monster” face to face and say, in my own way, “I see that you are damaged, and I hope one day you sit with yourself, apologize to yourself, and heal.”

Technically, that was the first thing I said right after that “te amo,” and that is where that outing should have ended.

But it didn’t.

It was never going to.

Because he was trying to get something completely different, and he wasn’t getting it. Nothing he was trying was working.

So he tried one more thing.

“One more thing. You remember that night?”

I did not want to repeat it again.

“Yes. What?”

“When you told me you wanted to suck my dick.”

I recoiled.

I started to say what I remembered. That he forced my head to his face. That he forced my hand down his pants.

He interrupted.

He tried to redirect the memory back into something he could live with.

He said I had made it sound like I was only there to talk, not for sex. Like he had violated me or something.

And there it was.

I wasn’t out of the thicket yet. Not entirely.

My body knew before I did.

I went there to talk.

I had not gone there for sex.

I had felt forced from the moment he forced my head to kiss him. From the moment he forced my hand down his pants. I didn’t want to have sex; that’s why I asked if he wanted head. This was not kink. This was not play. There was no permission being asked for and freely given.

There was pressure.

And he knew that.

He knew my history. He knew what I had survived. He knew the places in me that had already been hurt.

And still, he pushed.

I felt forced to keep going. Forced to get on top of him because he wouldn’t cum, because it would not end, because my brain had already gone into that place where the only instruction left was: just get it over with.

“It was what you said.”

My body was yelling at me.

I had softened the truth for him because I had been softening it for myself.

I did not forget.

I refused to call it what it was.

I refused because calling it what it was meant remembering the promise I had made myself: to never let any man touch me like that again.

Because I had made a terrifying promise to myself if a man ever did.

And a man did.

When that truth landed, I needed everyone with me. I couldn’t be alone. I was actually very scared to be by myself. I hated what my brain was doing. I love, however, how my family, therapists, friends, and ancestors/spirit came through. This honestly hasn’t been easy to get through, and with their help, I have been getting through it.

I kept talking down to myself, saying, “I swore I was smart. I swore I was intelligent. I went through this before. Why didn’t I know?” No measure of intelligence, no measure of trauma, could have prepared me for this. My therapists have reassured me that this could have happened to anyone and that this wasn’t my fault. And I have reassured myself of that same fact every day since I have settled with the truth.

People sometimes don’t understand that the body remembers before the story is ready. Sometimes you do not forget the facts. You forget the name. You remember what happened. You remember what was said. You remember the room, the feeling, the sickness, the way your brain said: just get it over with.

But you do not call it what it is.

Not yet.

Because naming it would tear down the whole structure you built to survive around it.

And I had built a structure.

I called it friendship.

I called it care.

I called it love.

I called it healing.

I called it facing my fear.

I called it wanting everyone to get along.

But the truth was simpler and more painful.

I was manipulated by him.

I was raped by him.

It happened.

It is fucking shitty and fucked up and terrible, and it sucks, and that’s putting it so fucking lightly.

And I have to sit with that truth without shaming myself for it.

I loved him. I thought he was my friend.

And now I know I had been convincing myself and everyone I know that I still loved him, and everyone looked at me like something was a tad broken in me, and it turns out, yeah — they were right. He was even more vile than I could admit, and the reality was more than I could handle.

I hated him. I hated myself. I had been dressing that hatred as love because love was the language I knew best. I love genuinely. I love deeply. I pour care into people. I make meaning. I try to understand where pain comes from.

But understanding someone is not the same as excusing them.

Compassion is not consent.

Pain does not make a person safe.

Trauma does not make a person harmless.

And my love was never supposed to be the place where someone else hid their violence.

The day after the park, he checked in. I told him I had onion bulbs for him and to come upstairs. When he did, he stopped on the steps.

“Why only here? Come up to the garden,” I said.

He said there were too many people upstairs.

“It’s my brother,” I told him.

He said it was better when it was just us.

Then I saw him grab himself.

And my brain started screaming.

This was not a misunderstanding.

This was not friendship.

This was not healing.

This was sickness.

He had done something similar before. On New Year’s, I had invited him and L upstairs. He told me L had gone to his room as soon as he heard me knock. He told me he would rather it be just us.

It all got louder.

The pattern started making a sound.

Then came the broom.

L needed it, or said he needed it, for the backyard. I was still trying to finish the front. When he saw me, he retreated. I could feel him looking for distance, and my old fear rose up.

“If you don’t like me, if you don’t want to be around me, just say it.”

There it was again.

The fear of being hated.

The fear of asking and hearing the answer I had been trained to expect.

He reassured me in his own way that he just needed the broom. But when I came back, the broom and dustpan were gone.

And I panicked.

I was angry.

I was lost.

I needed that broom.

Or I thought I did.

But the panic was not about the broom.

It was about the spell breaking.

I had been trying to clean the house with intentions that were not true. I had been trying to fix a problem I could not fix. I had been trying to create harmony in a place where my own body was still telling the truth and I was still asking it to wait.

The broom mattered because it belonged to the house.

But I do not belong to a house more than I belong to myself.

The intentions were not working because I was not setting them for myself.

I was setting them for peace.

For everyone.

For the house.

For the fantasy.

For the photo finish.

For the version where everyone heals because I stayed soft enough.

But I was not setting them from the truth.

The truth is that the loops only stop when I recognize what happened, name it, and stop shaming and hating myself for surviving it.

The truth is that I have to stop silencing myself for men.

Stop writing it only in poetry for the world or my soul to decipher.

Say it simply.

Say it painfully, so I understand.

I was manipulated.

I was raped.

It happened.

I cannot control whether he ever looks at himself and recognizes the harm he has done. I don’t know if I’m the only one he’s done something like this to. I can’t control whether anyone believes me. I can’t control what people do with the truth once it leaves my mouth.

But I can stop abandoning myself in advance.

I can stop making him larger than he is.

He is not a “monster.”

He is a man who harmed me.

And I am a woman who remembers.

A woman who has hated herself for having put herself through this generational bullshit for so damn long.

A woman who is learning to forgive herself for it.

So for that, thank you.

And I also have to be honest: L hurt me too.

Not in the same way. Not in the same place. But he hurt me.

And as much as I love him, as much as I want to give him grace, I cannot use grace to silence myself. I cannot make my love for him another place where I disappear.

I can thank him for the small things that helped me come back to myself. I can love him. I can wish him healing.

But I can also tell the truth: his absence hurt me. His distance hurt me. His silence hurt me.

And I am no longer willing to call that nothing just because I understand where it may have come from.

In Muisca belief, we are all reflections of one another. So if I saw myself reflected in you, L — in your wounds, in your distance, in your light, in whatever part of you I recognized before I had language for it — then maybe you are in for one beautiful ride in this lifetime.

The journey is great, king.

Messy, but beautiful.

Please take it.

With so much love and gratitude.

I have entered a kind of peace in knowing now.

Something I didn’t get when I was younger.

Or a decade ago.

I know it now, through myself in the present.

Through my body.

Through my mind.

Through the part of me that finally understood my love was real, but my endurance was not proof of it.

Through the part of me that finally let the story become plain.

A garden was never going to make the house a home.

The broom was never going to heal the house.

But losing it helped me stop lying to myself.

And that is where everything started looking much cleaner.

Frozen Oranges In Little Rooms

I was never genuinely good with change.

I mean, from the moment I was removed from my mother’s womb, I reacted by choking myself with my umbilical cord. And when that didn’t work, apparently I was constantly unswaddling myself. I hated — hated — being out of my comfort zone. I have never been one to enjoy when someone moves something in my world.

I have AuDHD, so it’s not always that I will notice and lose it the way my father would. But my body will notice. My body will feel the shift. My body will get emotional and register the loss before I even understand what has gone missing.

Lately, I have been very present in my own life. For a person who tends to anxiously dwell in the past and focus-jump into the void of the future — well, it used to look like a void; now it just looks scrambled, because I never thought I would live this long — the present is actually an amazing place to be.

I realize now that I haven’t always been reflecting so much as drowning in my past lakes. That is why my present was so hard to live in. That is why my future seemed so bleak. It is okay to reflect, but as soon as you feel your old self pulling you in, you have to pull back and walk away. You do not need to dip into, or fall into, any place you no longer need to enter.

And anytime you go back to past lakes that are too dark or too deep, always grab a line and tie it to a strong tree. That way, if you get caught by your reflection, you can pull yourself up and find your way back out.

I have felt more in my body, more in tune, more here, than I have been since I was maybe sixteen or so — before I knew what had happened to me, before I had language for certain violences, before I knew anything about my summers in Colombia as a kid. Even before that age, I was never completely whole. Pieces of me had already been taken, and I had already lived through physical and mental abuse I was well aware of. But I felt there. I lived. I owned myself, and ferociously so.

Today, we were driving through my old neighborhood, and my brother and I realized the old bagel place we went to growing up was closed again. It had been closed for over a month now, and my brother mentioned the old lady who worked there.

I remembered her from elementary school and junior high school. She made the best plain bagel with cream cheese. To me, it felt like heaven: that thick block of Philadelphia cream cheese sliced off and slabbed — PLOP, SLAP — onto the bagel. It did not need to be toasted because it was just that fresh. And it was $1.10.

Yes. $1.10.

I would pass by every once in a while as the years went by, and the years had made her smaller. They had curled her into something that would make anyone’s bones ache. Inflation made the bagel more expensive, of course, but it was still fucking delicious.

I was sad because I hoped the inevitable whispers of Mother had not asked for her return again. Even though I know living in that kind of ache is no life for a woman who spent more than half her life standing and making those delicious bagels — bagels she had made for my older brothers too.

But I also hoped some piece-of-crap mogul had not taken this mother and daughter out of their bagel business.

And then I started to room-inate.

Farther down, we drove to the place where there used to be a swimming pool. It was completely demolished.

There was once a pool there where only white kids went — seriously — because none of us could afford to go. Now it was closed. Gone. Leveled.

We found it interesting that when they finally — finally — made it reasonably priced enough to let everyone in, it only took a few years for them to shut the pool club down and demolish it completely.

It felt like it spoke to something larger about the kind of community we were part of. When I was a kid, I wanted so badly to go into that pool club. I would peek into it all the time and ask my parents why we couldn’t go. As I got older, I started to understand how discriminatory that place was. There was a reason so many people could not get in. The pricing was designed so lower-income people could not access the pool, and since the majority of lower-income people in our neighborhood came from marginalized communities, it made exclusion easy.

As an adult, finding out that this had changed made me happy.

Until they closed it down.

And it made me see that sometimes watching youth thrive where your family had once been denied access is not only a correction. It is a kind of grief too. Because the door finally opened, and then the whole building disappeared.

Roominate.

Then we passed the field.

The field where I used to play with my dogs. Where I spent countless snow days. Where I watched my friends play their team games. Where I ran track. Where I drank until I forgot why I was even there. Where I cut through for shortcuts. Where I played handball. Where I hid away from the problems at home.

It was completely covered up.

“Wonder what they’re doing to it,” my brother said.

I looked at it blankly.

“Probably some commercial development,” I joked.

But then something filled me with dread.

What if it was commercial development? What if it was another building? What if they were taking the field down because it was no longer serving its purpose? What if it was just taking up space, and they needed to build something new?

Roomination.

As we started to make the turn, we saw my favorite place.

The Historical House.

But it looked different too. All the windows were covered. Something was definitely happening there.

The field and the House?

Are they going to take the House?

This house was here when I came back as a little girl. This is the house I pointed out behind Willie in Paris Is Burning and said, “THEY FILMED HERE!”

And he said, “Yes, they did, baby girl.”

Willie, who taught me to be who I am and to never settle for less. The grandest person — and his mom! — you could ever get to grow up around as your neighbor.

I saw that house in all its phases. I met my friend Joel — Pigeon — in that house, and never was a drop of wine wasted there. Words were sold at valuable offers, and boy, were they worth every bit spent.

I miss him daily. I think of him often. And I wondered what would happen if they ever did anything to that Historical House.

After all, that wasn’t its first place of living. The House had its bones somewhere else before its feet were cut, lifted, and placed near my childhood home. It had a rough time getting used to us, but now it has been well over thirty-five years. Now it is comfortable. Now it has found its shape and skin and settled here.

So what is happening to it now?

Room in ate.

Room in ation.

Rooms.

Matt Berninger’s “Frozen Oranges” began to play in the car.

I think the rooms in my mind heard the words before I had a chance to hear them. I began to tear up, and I did not quite understand what was going on. I was having a particularly good morning. We got bagels from the other really good place we love. I felt good. We were laughing and joking around.

So why was I feeling this way?

Then Matt sang about frozen oranges in the trees in Indiana. Crystal apples in the creeks. Swimming in a limestone quarry. Saturday.

And I realized it was, indeed, Saturday.

But more than that, Matt was singing about a memory. About childhood. About nostalgia.

And here I was, in my old neighborhood, in my rooms, watching them tumble down and change all around me.

And I smiled.

I was sad. I was so sad. I was grieving. Because I kept asking, What’s happening? But underneath that, I was really asking: What’s going to happen to my memories? What’s going to happen to all the things I lived? To all the things that happened here? Are they gone if this is gone?

And the answer came almost immediately.

Yes, because it was gone a long time ago.

The moment already happened, babe. You lived it. And as long as you live, the moment lives. And once you’re gone, the moment goes into the memory of all things.

Huh.

As easy as that.

No, it still hurts. Change hurts. But it makes way for some really beautiful things sometimes, so be open to it. Not all change is bad. Don’t settle for less because it is comfortable.

Oh, I’ll never sett—

I’ll never settle.

I said it to myself for the first time in a very long time.

I said it when I was younger, but I do not think I understood the meaning then. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe when I was choking myself with the umbilical cord, unswaddling myself, being the ultimate colicky bebé, my spirit was already saying, This body was just not enough, and it did not yet have the language to explain itself.

I was always uncomfortable in myself. People took from me and absorbed me, which made me want to hide more. People would say I was capable of more, or that I was scary, or imposing, because I could speak my mind. Because I could say how I felt. Because I could see through them, or listen, or understand, or whatever gift they wanted from me while resenting me for having it.

I used to cower. I used to get upset. I used to try to be lower. Shut down. Act differently. Mask.

And in the past couple of years, I have decided: truly, fuck it.

I am going to be myself. I am going to love myself and ignore what anyone else thinks or wants me to be. I am going to accept that I am this pure, loving, caring, intuitive, empathetic, bold, assertive person who wants the best for herself and for the people she loves.

And if people cannot get behind that, great. If they can, great too. But if they want to be a dick about it, they can fuck right off. I am not here for their bullshit.

I realized I am capable of change. In fact, I welcome it.

Change is good and needed at times so beautiful things can be born and flourish. We can be the creators of beautiful things in our own lives. We can be the change we choose to see.

And not everything is necessarily changed forever. All we have to do is travel to the rooms in our minds. We can ruminate, yes, but we can also remember beautifully.

I have these little rooms in my head, decorated and lovely, full of thoughts and things and places that remind me of my past. Wonderful things. Angry things. Sad things. All the things that make up me.

And for the first time in my life, I see myself as a monster I can bear to look at — and even love to admire — instead of something I can only other, or speak of in shadows.

I appreciate these rooms because they give me a greater appreciation of my present. They give me love for what I have now, for whom I have around me, and a greater awareness of how I want to spend my time.

They also make me think about my future. But not too far ahead. I am realistic now, and hopeful. I understand that we live in a world changing so constantly that it would be ridiculous for me to think too far ahead. I think as far as I am realistically allowed to think at this point, with how everything is going.

And honestly? It has been a lot better than I thought it would be.

It took me almost forty years for my spirit to finally adjust to my body, and I have to say: choking myself with my umbilical cord might seem a tad dramatic, but looking back and seeing what a dumpster fire this timeline has been, I can understand why the fuck I did such an insane thing.

I would never settle for such a terrible timeline.

So, BRB. I’m going to make something beautiful in this timeline.

Because fuck hoping. We have to make it.

A Way - Part Two

“You know I could walk up by my damn self,” Moira snapped, ripping her wrist from Ben’s sweaty grip.

Ben hadn’t even realized he’d been dragging her—from the gym, to the street, up the stairs, breathless and frantic.

“Huh—oh, sorry, Moira, I’m just—when you see it, her, you’ll—”

They stopped short at his door.

Moira planted her palm flat against his chest, holding him there.
“Her?” she demanded. “Wait. I’m meeting someone? You’ve been a wreck for months, Benjamin, and now there’s a her? What the fuck?”

Tears pooled in her eyes, sharp and sudden.

“I don’t need to meet whoever she is,” Moira continued, her voice breaking, “at least not yet. In case you’ve forgotten, she was practically my sister. My family. When I lost everyone, she was there. And—”

“Hey,” a voice said gently from inside the apartment. “What’s going on? I heard voices.”

Angie stood there.

Just as Moira remembered her.
Living. Breathing.

A sound tore its way out of Moira’s chest as her eyes widened and her hand tightened in the fabric of Ben’s jacket. Ben covered Moira’s hand with his own, felt the violent tremor in her fingers, hoped—stupidly—that touch could anchor this moment.

“Moi—”

“Shut up,” Moira whispered. “Shut. Up.”

Tears slid down her face as she slowly let go of Ben. She tilted her head, wonder and disbelief softening her features, her shoulders sagging as if her body wanted to collapse—but didn’t. Bearing witness mattered more than fainting.

“How are…” she tried. Swallowed. “How are you here?”

Angie’s eyes filled as she shrugged helplessly, a small, broken smile tugging at her mouth.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the wedding was a promise. Or a wish. I—I don’t know.”

Moira laughed through her tears and wiped her face.
“A wish,” she echoed. “It was a wish.”

She hugged Angie.

Then Ben did.

For a moment, it was the happiest thing any of them had ever known—the relief of Angie being back, alive, here.

Until Ben’s arms closed around Moira.

“What—no,” Moira gasped, shoving him away. “No. No no no no no.”

Ben’s heart slammed into his throat.

Angie was gone.

Ben stood there, everything still. Even the dust in the air seemed to hold her outline — a shape where she had been.

He looked at Moira.

Her arms were tight at her sides, fingers twitching outward — the same nervous reach she used to make when she’d grab for Angie’s hand in crowded rooms.

Ben kept staring, like his body hadn’t received the message yet.

Then he moved.

“Angie?”

He checked the hallway first, then the bathroom, then the bedroom — opening doors as if she might be standing politely behind one, waiting for the right cue to return.

“Angie, stop. This isn’t—”

“Ben.”

Moira’s shoulders dropped. She stepped into the middle of the living room.

The apartment did not feel empty.

It felt… plucked. Rearranged. Nothing missing. Just shifted.

“She just disappeared,” Ben said, breathing uneven. “We have to find her.”

Moira lifted her hand.

“Hold on.”

“For what?”

“Shhh.”

“You saw her. She was here.”

“I know.”

“And she’s gone.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?!”

Moira’s jaw tightened.

“Because it can’t be that you saw her all night and I only got her for a few minutes in the morning. Because Benjamin — you may have been her husband — but I am her sister.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It steadied.

“I felt it when she left the first time. I felt it in my ribs. And I’m telling you right now — she is not gone like that.”

Ben swallowed.

Moira took one step closer.

“You think because you two were special bone buddies that makes you more important than me?” she said, deadpan. “Moira equals Bestie for Life. Always.”

Ben blinked.

Then laughed — sharp and startled.

She hit his arm.

He pulled her into a hug. They laughed harder than the moment deserved. Then quieter. Then still. Moira’s head rested on his shoulder. “Where are you here, Ange?” she whispered to the room. “Why leave here  like that? You wouldn’t just go—right? Not with me. Not just like that.”Ben pressed his cheek into her hair. “Like you said,” he murmured. “You feel her. You’ll tell me the day she’s gone again.” Moira nodded once. “A promise.”

That night, Ben woke into paralysis.

He couldn’t move.

The air felt thick, pressing down on his chest.

There was weight at the edge of the mattress.

Tall.

Still.

Watching him.

His throat worked uselessly.

The figure leaned forward.

Hair falling over its face.

And then—

“Oh my god, you should see your face!”

Angie burst into laughter.

The pressure vanished.

Ben jerked upright.

“What the hell, Ange?”

“I have always wanted to scare you like that,” she said, wiping imaginary tears from her eyes. “And I thought this was the best opportunity.”

“You’re dead.”

“And you still scare easy!”

“No, I meant — you’re dead!”

She laughed again, and he lunged for her. She darted away, the room bending strangely around them as if the walls were slightly tilted.

He caught her by the waist and pulled her in.

He buried his face in her hair.. It still smelled like her raspberry cowash.

“Tell me this is real,” he whispered. “Tell me I’m not just dreaming.”

She leaned back slightly and looked at him.

“What I’ve learned so far,” she said gently, “is that two things can be true.”

She placed her hands on his face.

“This is real.”

The clock behind her began to soften at the edges.

“And you are dreaming.”

Ben looked around.

The walls breathed.

The bed stretched slightly too long.

The digital clock melted — numbers fixed at 9:08.

“Why did you leave?”

A small pause.

“I think we misjudged it,” she said. “We don’t always get the whole morning.”

“What happens now?”

She wrapped her arms around him, resting her chin against his chest.

“For now,” she whispered, “we have this.”

“And after?”

“There are ways,” she said softly. “Not all of them look like this.”

“How will I know—”

She stopped him with a kiss.

“Ask Moira.”

She leaned close to his ear.

“And you forgot to turn on your alar—”

Ben woke with a choking gasp.

The room was still.

The microwave clock glowed through the doorway.

9:09 a.m.

He grabbed his phone.

9:09.

His mind snagged on the dream.

9:08.

The number would not let go.

His phone rang.

Moira.

He answered.

There was a long breath on the other end.

“Ben,” she said quietly. “What time was she buried?”

His stomach dropped.

“Nine-oh-eight.”

Silence.

On both ends.

“That’s the hour,” Moira said.

Neither of them said what it meant.

A Way (Part One)

“It’s our anniversary,” Angie murmured as her eyes fluttered open, fixing on the brick archway above her. Her voice echoed softly through the dim space. For a moment, reflex took over—she reached for her neck, grasping quickly, hoping this was only some wild dream.

But the world sharpened instead.

The smell of damp stone and dust.
The cold, unmoving air.
The gentle weight of a chain resting against her collarbone.

And on that chain—

“…the ring.”

She pressed the metal between her thumb and index finger, as if it were something she could still warm by holding.

Angie pushed herself upright and leaned back against the wall, taking in the St. Patrick Basilica catacombs. The place was still beautiful—quiet, reverent, heavy with endings. Every year, she returned to this exact spot. The place where she and Ben had met during a candlelight tour.

A strange place to fall in love.
Stranger still to return to after death.

This was where their love learned how to live.

Her ending happened elsewhere.

But beginnings imprint deeper.

That was why she came back here.

Angie died seven years ago—only three years after meeting Ben. And though death took her body, it didn’t erase the life they built together. They loved each other fiercely, absurdly, as if the universe had made a clerical error and let two halves of the same soul collide too soon.

They met right here, between two cardinals’ tombs, the moment Angie’s shoe betrayed her. The Velcro gave out, and she went flying—face-first—into Ben’s Old Navy blue-label sweater.

“Can you walk?” he asked, annoyed and startled.

“Apparently… no.” She lifted her ankle, showing him the dangling shoe. She tried a hop. “See? Tore up from the—well, not the floor up, but close enough.”

Ben smiled despite himself. His warm brown eyes met her storm-grey ones—and her eyes smiled back at him. Fully. Kindly. A softness he didn’t know eyes were capable of.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m being a dick.”

“Thank you for apologizing,” she replied. “Are you having a bad day?”

“Think I’ve had a few,” he laughed weakly.

“Do you want to talk about it? It’s okay if you don’t—we don’t even know each oth—”

“Would you like to know me?”

She paused. Then smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “Actually… do you want to get coffee?”

That coffee became the first of many.
Hands found each other.
Lives unfolded.

Angie and Ben were in love long before either of them admitted it. They made plans easily, carelessly, believing time would behave itself.

For a while, it did.

Plans for the wedding came together smoothly. The reception plans followed. The years they spent together blurred into a continuous warmth—bright, consuming, deeply ordinary in the way real love often is. They argued sometimes. Small fractures. But they never lost sight of one another. Every day still carried the same spark that had drawn them together in the catacombs.

People like to say the honeymoon phase fades. That it’s just a trick of novelty.

But not for them.

For Angie and Ben, love felt like a long, unbroken thought—something luminous, stretching forward without a visible end.

Ben planned the surprise carefully. Angie had always wanted the small patch of grass near the pier—the place where they’d shared their first kiss—for their wedding reception. It was an odd request. Nearly impossible.

Ben made it happen anyway.

He guided her there blindfolded, one hand wrapped securely around hers. When they reached the grass, music bloomed behind them—her friend’s band covering the song they loved most.

“Are you kidding me?” Angie laughed. “What—oh my god, what’s happening?”

Ben removed the blindfold.

“Remember when you said this place was impossible to get?” he asked, arms folding around her as he tried to stay calm.

Her body bounced with joy. Her eyes filled.

“We got it, babe.”

She screamed—pure, unfiltered happiness—and broke from his arms only to launch herself back into them, kissing him breathless.

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Anything we can’t,” he said softly, kissing her back, “we’ll figure out together.”

She swayed against him as the music carried on, humming the words under her breath.

“But I somehow
Slowly love you…”

“Angie?” Ben murmured.

Her steps faltered.

Her weight shifted—wrong, sudden, heavy. He adjusted instinctively, reaching for her face.

Time folded.

Her lips whispered, “a way.”

Her eyes rolled back.

Her head fell.

Ben’s knees hit the grass.

The music stopped.

People rushed forward.

Phones came out.

Angie’s nose began to bleed. Her breathing turned wet and uneven.

No one called 911.

They recorded Ben holding her as she died of an aneurysm in his arms.

“It was our wedding anniversary,” Ben said later, at the eulogy. “We were planning—”

He couldn’t finish. There was no ending to reach.

After the wake, he asked Moira—Angie’s closest friend—to stay behind. He handed her two rings, each threaded onto a chain.

“We never got married,” he said quietly. “All I want is to spend the rest of my life with the woman I love.”

Moira stared at him, grief and horror colliding.

“Oh my fucking god, Ben—are you okay?”

“I just watched the woman I love die in my arms,” he said, breaking. “The least I can do is marry her. Grieve her properly.”

Since Moira was ordained, she performed the ceremony.

She placed Angie’s hand into Ben’s.
Then Ben’s into Angie’s.

“Angie,” she said softly, “do you take this man—”

A pipe banged somewhere in the walls.

They froze.

“And you, Ben?”

“I do.”

Moira lifted the rings—to the sky, to the floor, to the center—and placed the chains around their necks.

“By the powers of earth, time, and all planes between,” she said, “I pronounce you husband and wife.”

The year that followed hollowed Ben out. He lost his job. Sold the apartment. Moved back into his old place. Smoked too much. Drank more. Wondered if it would’ve been easier to follow her instead of surviving her.

By the next anniversary, he wandered the pier drunk and alone, drawn back to the grass without knowing why.

As night fell, people came and went. Eventually, there was no one.

He cried.

He cried as the scent of her perfume slipped into the air. As he felt the gentle press of a hand against his face. He remembered the moment he swore he could feel her soul leave her body.

“A husk,” he muttered.

“Hey,” a voice whispered. “I’m not a husk.”

Ben opened his eyes.

Angie sat in front of him, wearing her pale dress. The ring rested at her throat. She looked whole. Alive.

Ben choked on his breath and scrambled backward in terror.
“How—how did—what are you—”

“It’s our anniversary,” she said gently.

“Our wedding anniversary,” she clarified. “You had Moira perform the ceremony. Remember?”

At first, she told him, waking in the catacombs had been terror. Screaming. Panic. The realization that she was gone. Dying hadn’t just been losing her life—it had been losing him too.

“I don’t know how this is happening,” she said, tears welling. “It’s like you made a wish. And I came back.”

Ben crawled toward her slowly.

“Can I… touch you?”

She guided his hand to her chest. He felt warmth. A heartbeat. The rise and fall of her breath. Her birthmark. The ring.

“Is this permanent?” he asked quietly. “Do we have time?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “What matters is now.”

They kissed—saying everything they couldn’t yet put into words. Longing. Ache. Trauma. Love.

That night, he took her home.

They spoke for hours. Held each other until sleep claimed them both.

At 7:05 a.m., Ben’s alarm went off.

Angie slept beside him.

He smiled. He couldn’t wait to show Moira the miracle.

When Moira arrived, he grabbed her arm.
“You’re taking the day off. You’re coming with me.”

She pulled back immediately.
“Ben—are you okay? Like… really okay?”

“Yes,” he said urgently. “Please. Just come with me. Coffee. I need to show you something.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Once I figure out you’re tore up from the floor up, we’re going to the cuckoo’s nest.”

“I think once you see what I see,” Ben said, “you’re gonna think we should go together.”

Moira followed him, uneasy, back toward his apartment—just a few blocks away—completely unaware of what waited a few floors up.