The silence here isn't an absence, but a vast, wide space that used to feel like a threat, like something was missing if it wasn't filled with the clamor of what i was supposed to be doing. Now, that expanse just holds the feeling of sun on my shoulders, the way the ocean pulls at my ankles, and that specific, electric joy when cosmo barrels into the waves, a kind of primal roar. And sometimes, just sometimes, in that wide open space, there’s a flicker of remembering the taste of that perfect starfruit, how it just uncoiled something in my jaw that i didn’t know was clenched until it wasn't anymore, a sweetness that feels like exactly where i am, utterly undiluted, just this.