it’s almost jarring, how clearly that specific, visceral ache behind the eyes returns, the one that makes your whole skull feel too small, seeing it now on someone else. a hollow echo in my own ribs, not the pain itself, just the memory of its shape, and it almost makes me laugh, a dark kind of humor, at how stubbornly the body holds onto the blueprints of utter despair, even when the house itself has been rebuilt.