Artwork by Shain Parwiz
It is said that scars are sexy, if that’s true then I must be the sexiest man alive.
My scars, they are different; and whoever said that is probably a fool.
Because mine are unsexy, unwholesome and permanently etched.
Not a neat little scar you can show off later, all faded and white, a clean line you trace with your finger and pretend it doesn’t ache anymore.
Not a story you package up for polite conversation.
Not something you carry like a winner’s medal for surviving.
This isn’t poetic.
This isn’t a narrative arc with resolution.
This isn’t resilience.
That’s a word for people who bounce back.
I didn’t bounce.
I shattered.
This is fucking obliteration.
A crater,
blasted straight through the soft, vulnerable centre of everything
that tethered me to anything that felt solid,
that felt real.
Not absence, that is too quiet. Too simple. Too perfect.
This was impact.
A goddamn blast radius where the rest of my life used to be,
leaving nothing but scorched earth and memory ash.
I didn’t lose her.
That word’s too soft,
like misplacing your keys.
She wasn’t misplaced.
She was erased.
Molecule by agonizing molecule.
Slipping from the frame while I sat helpless,
watching the colour bleed from everything we were.
From the world itself.
I wasn’t even there when it began.
That’s the bitter twist.
The cruellest of punchlines.
I was overseas,
Tokyo streets under my feet,
trying to chase joy,
trying to outrun the ghosts that were already starting to catch up with me,
I just didn’t know it yet,
while the ground back home crumbled beneath her.
She sent me a video.
That tired smile.
“Enjoy your trip.”
“Don’t worry.”
Those last valuable words.
Polite. Calm. Final.
I still have that video, and you can only prise it away from me when I join her.
I caught the next flight out.
A metal cage hurtling through time I couldn’t reclaim,
my hands useless, the countdown ticking loud in my skull.
By the time I stepped into the hospital,
she was already gone.
Not officially.
Not medically.
But the part of her that would’ve known me?
Already somewhere else.
Changi General Hospital, the place that took so many from me.
Some cab driver made a joke calling it Cannot Go Home.
I didn’t laugh. I wanted to hurt him.
But looking back, he was right.
Medically induced silence.
Eyes closed.
No final words.
No last exchange.
Just machines breathing on her behalf.
The person who made it possible for me to breathe without flinching,
who saw the cracks and didn’t run away screaming,
was already a ghost in a room too bright to be holy.
I never got to say goodbye.
Never got to say I’m sorry,
for the days I stayed too far inside my head,
for the times I thought I’d have time.
Never got to say thank you,
for not judging me.
For never asking me to be anything but me.
For being the only place in the world
where I didn’t have to perform.
All I got were sixty-three fucking days
of humming lights,
rhythmic beeps counting backwards,
and unbreathable air thick with the weight of everything unsaid.
Hope didn’t die clean.
It rotted.
By day forty-five,
it sounded like a joke someone forgot the punchline to.
Somewhere in there, I stopped recognizing myself.
The part of me that once reached out, that believed, even faintly, in rescue,
just flickered and went out.
Not in some grand collapse.
Just a quiet erasure of warmth.
When she finally left,
she took the language with her.
The part of me that could find the right words
just dissolved.
What was left wasn’t grief.
Grief is tidy.
Grief has candles.
Grief is supposed to help you heal.
This was a howl.
An internal scream that makes no sound but eats every moment that should’ve been quiet.
The void didn’t arrive like a storm.
Storms pass.
IT moved in like an unwanted tenant.
Non-negotiable.
Owed.
You ever try to live next to a scream?
Try to sleep while something inside you is howling?
Try to make tea in a room where someone used to exist
and now doesn’t,
but the air still holds their shape?
Try to breathe when your chest is full of a second set of lungs
inhaling nothing but absence?
That’s the void.
IT doesn’t fade.
IT feeds.
On colour.
On sound.
On memory.
IT turns breath into effort.
Light into bruise.
Sound into echo.
And still they tell you,
“Fill IT”
That sounds so simple.
That’s where they stop because I doubt they have the answers if I ask.
With what?
IT devours memory.
Swallows distraction.
Takes the kind ones,
the patient ones,
the ones who reach in,
and crushes them with gravity.
Even music stops working.
The notes feel dishonest.
Even God stops answering.
Assuming he ever did.
You learn to decorate the wreckage.
To hang paintings on crumbling walls.
To smile through collapse.
To set the table for one.
To host the ghost.
You stop asking for comfort.
The words taste like ash anyway.
You start getting good at smiling.
A reflex.
A trick.
A mask worn down smooth by use.
Days pass
but my past doesn’t, and I realize now that
the void feels like the only honest thing left.
IT doesn’t heal.
Doesn’t forgive.
Doesn’t pretend.
IT just is.
Raw.
Constant.
And brutal.
And the worst part?
IT still feels more familiar
than anything
I’ve ever had.
Author’s Note
I’ve written about this loss before.
I’ll probably write about it again.
Because some things don’t get processed, they echo.
This one isn’t about grief.
It’s about what stays after grief has hollowed out the floorboards.
If you’ve ever lived next to a scream,
you already know.
Thank you for letting me speak.
-Shain
If this felt like your language too,
I’m sorry that you had to experience it.
Subscribe to walk this path with me
No hype. No Filters. Just truth.
Beautifully raw and hits deep. This resonates with me in a way I wish it didn't. I hope this helped to process your emotions.
Thank you for this raw realness that doesn’t tie up pain into a pretty bow. It’s honest and shows the complexity of holding so much. May the process of sharing your scars with others help heal them and in turn soothe you in the ways you need . 🙏🏽