Tethered

Some people have jobs which bind them. Some people have families. The only thing that binds me is pain. Pain from memories I wish could be washed away with the tide. If only there was a genie who could grant me a single wish and erase one day of my life.

Just one day...

That’s all I ask.

I never had a choice. I was never asked—just taken. On that fateful night, I died. From then on, I have lived each day, looking into the eyes of the boy who witnessed the night my world collapsed. Like me, he had no choice. We lived through that night together, but we also died that night together. My brother was the only man in my life who I could let myself love. He was the only man who could give me the kind of love I was capable of receiving.

I was fractured—a broken woman with nothing but hate in her bones and a void in her heart. I wasn’t able to let a man love me. I wasn’t able to love a man the way he would expect to be and should be loved. I was just a shell, living day by day, seeing that only emptiness laid in my wake.

I felt useless.

I felt lifeless.

Until you.