sound the alarm

There are moments that cling to you like mist, creeping in from the edges of your consciousness until you’re soaked in them, lost. The world moves on, steady and indifferent, but you’re left here, caught in a blip, just a quick flicker in time that consumes you entirely. It was like a panic, yes, but not the sort that strikes in lonely darkness. No, it was shared. A frenzy of desire, no, urgency, to touch, to get as close as possible, as though we could escape the relentless rhythm of time by crashing into each other. It was mad, almost foolish, how we thought we could suspend reality simply by willing it so.

And then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. A storm passed, leaving me with that hollow feeling, the way an alcoholic swears off the bottle while still tasting its poison on their lips. I made promises to myself in the aftermath. Never again. Never this again. But those promises are thin, fragile things, broken before they’re even made. It’s the emotional hangover, I suppose, the way it sinks into your bones and makes you swear off the very thing that destroyed you.

What were we doing, after all? Trying to forget. Trying to pretend that everything outside our grasp had paused, that we existed in some pocket of time separate from the rest of the world. But the truth is, we’re the ones who aren’t real. The moment passes, and suddenly we’re ghosts again, haunting the edges of a life we’ll never truly belong to. And yet, for just that brief, frantic flash, we thought we could hold on to something lasting.