the photo on my desk, it just sits there now, a flat square of paper, not a vortex, not a weight, and that should feel completely freeing, and it does, in a way, like a tether has finally frayed and given way, but then there's this weird almost disorienting sense of too much space inside, like the muscle that used to clench and hold things together, that familiar bracing around my spine, it’s just…gone, and the body, the actual physical structure of me, almost doesn’t know what to do with the sudden ease, the lack of resistance, so there’s this phantom tightening in my lower back, a ghost of a previous tension, a reminder of the structure that used to be there, not because it’s needed, but because it was always there, a constant companion, and the absence of it is almost more jarring than its presence ever was, like the air itself is thinner, or thicker, somehow different without that constant internal pressure, and for a split second, there’s a need, a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch, to put it back, to find that familiar resistance, just to feel something known, before the deeper, slower breath settles in and the feeling passes, dissolving into the summer air that drifts through the open window, cool against my skin.