Trauma does not fade—it refracts.
It bends light around a name,
a moment,
until they are everywhere,
like air, like gravity,
pulling you into their orbit.
It stains the fabric of thought.
Not a memory,
but the architecture of your mind.
They live not as themselves,
but as the shadow of a hand,
the tilt of a voice,
the way the earth tilts
just before the fall.
What breaks you, remakes you.
What burns, inscribes.
A scar is a monument to pain,
and every monument
immortalizes its creator.
You breathe them.
You dream them.
Their absence is their presence.
They do not need to stay
to be here forever.
