Breakdown howl

I was a fool in love.

Twice.

Once in a sour marriage

and once in a miracle

I couldn’t hold.

Two lives,

two abandonments,

and the same man

at the centre of both —

bleeding,

bewildered,

bare.

People love the idea of kindness.

They post it.

Preach it.

Perform it.

But let a man say,

“My mind broke,”

and suddenly the masks slip.

The room shifts.

The air goes cold.

You become a warning,

a whisper,

a disappointment.

“You should…”

“You shouldn’t…”

“Why did you…?”

“Why didn’t you…?”

“What you should do…”

“What were you thinking?”

Like I had the luxury

of thought

while falling through myself.

The truth is uglier:

I wasn’t thinking.

I was screaming underwater.

I was trying to outrun

grief and guilt

with legs made of wisps of smoke.

Every heartbeat

was a coughing collapse.

Every breath

a whipped punishment.

And the world —

God, the world —

backs away from the wounded.

Backs away from the messy.

Backs away from the man

sobbing in the wreckage

of two impossible loves.

They say, “Take care of yourself,”

but what they mean is

“Take your pain elsewhere.”

They want tidy.

I am not tidy.

So here I am —

a man staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m.,

asking the oldest question:

What’s the point of life

if love turns you inside out

and then closes the door?

What’s the point

if your heart can split open

twice

and still be considered

unreasonable?

What’s the point

if all a breakdown earns you

is silence,

distance,

and the echo of your own name

accusing you in the dark?

Some nights I think

the only honest sound

left in me

is the howl —

the one that starts in the chest,

burns up the throat,

and refuses to die

quietly in your whispered words.

I was a fool in love.

I paid the price.

And I’m still here,

asking the question

no one wants to answer:

If this is what living feels like,

why do we keep doing it?