She asks me how I feel and I say I don’t know, which is true, but also untrue in a way that makes my chest tighten like a knot that’s been wet for years.
I don’t want to talk about my grief.
Not because it hurts too much, but because it hurts just enough to be poetic.
And that makes me distrust it.
Because if I cry now, is it real?
Or am I just trying to be good at therapy?
I want to say: Do you know what it’s like to feel like you have to bleed in the shape of a thesis?
But I don’t. I sit still. Palms open on my thighs like a monk waiting for lightning.
Outside, someone honks.
Inside, I imagine eating glass just to feel something sharp enough to cut through the fog of being interpreted.
She nods, slow, soft, patient. Like a priest.
She says the word mother again.
Like it’s a safe word. Like it’s a spell.
But I don’t want to be healed right now.
I want to build.
I want to rip the drywall off the world and see the rust behind it.
I want to name the systems and fix the leak and ship the product and keep moving because the moment I stop, someone will try to turn my silence into surrender.
She asks where I think the drive comes from.
I say, "From clarity."
She tilts her head.
She wants to trace it to the wound.
But I won’t give her the satisfaction.
Because yes, I lost my language, my land, my name.
But the fire in me didn’t come from ash.
It came from seeing—from watching the world fail over and over again and realizing that someone had to stay awake while it did.
Sometimes I wish I could let her hold it. The grief.
But I’m afraid she’ll label it before I’m ready.
Tuck it in a drawer next to abandonment and high-functioning and latent guilt.
And once it’s filed, I’ll never get it back in its raw shape.
So instead, I say nothing.
I breathe.
And for a moment, I imagine a version of me that doesn’t need to earn love through coherence.
A version that can cry without being read.
Lead without being softened.
Grieve without being explained.
I think that version might be closer than I thought.
He just hasn’t learned the right language yet.