Death Notice

Belonging, as Imagined
died at 3:07 a.m.
There were no witnesses
except the body, which did not sleep.

It had been unwell for years,
sustained by repetition,
by hope mistaken for evidence,
by longing rehearsed as faith.

It is survived by
a quieter self
and the absence of illusion.

No service is planned.

I. The Near Miss

I stood again at the threshold.

The room inside was warm.
There were names for everything.
There was a script
in which I could be folded.

I felt the old relief
at the thought of surrender.
How simple it would be
to let belief precede truth.

To say yes
and allow the story to carry me.

But the hour was unforgiving.
At three in the morning
desire loses its rhetoric.

The body does not perform well at that hour.
It cannot sustain fantasy.

I understood
I could not make myself believe
in order to be held.

II. The Recognition

This was not the first time.

At twenty-five
I mistook structure for safety.
I mistook certainty for love.
I mistook obedience for home.

I entered a system
the way a child enters a house
with the lights already on
and food already prepared.

Loneliness is persuasive.
Family hunger edits memory.
Intuition grows quiet
when belonging is offered.

I fused then.
I overrode myself.
I translated unease into devotion.

The body did not forget.

III. The Collapse of Fantasy

The fantasy of belonging has died.

It did not fail dramatically.
There was no accusation.
No door slammed.
No revelation.

It weakened gradually.

Each time I noticed
the seam between what I felt
and what I was told to feel,
a thread loosened.

Each time I called hunger faith,
another thread.

Each time I renamed doubt
as weakness,
the structure thinned.

It survived on reinterpretation.
On saying, this discomfort is growth.
On saying, this silence is reverence.
On saying, stay.

But the body began to hesitate.
It would not lean forward.
It would not kneel on command.

At 3 a.m.
there was no audience.

Only the plain fact
that I could see the structure
from the outside.

I saw that it was made of desire.
I saw that I had mistaken desire
for evidence.

The fantasy of belonging has died.

Nothing replaced it.

IV. The Body

There was shaking.
Cold along the spine.
A tightening in the jaw.

The heart struck too quickly.

The body does not understand doctrine.
It understands proximity.
It understands the herd.

When attachment recedes,
it calls this danger.

The animal waits
for the group to return.

It does not.

This is what refusal feels like
in the nervous system.

V. The Honesty

This time
I did not silence myself.

I did not translate doubt
into devotion.

I did not exchange perception
for acceptance.

I did not bargain clarity
for warmth.

There was no triumph in this.
Only restraint.

No applause.
No revelation.

Only the decision
not to fuse.

VI. The Quiet After

What remains
is unadorned.

A room.
Breath.
Morning approaching without promise.

No banner.
No tribe.
No myth large enough
to disappear into.

I wanted a place to rest.
I discovered it was built from longing.

Belonging, as imagined,
is not returning.

There is no ceremony.

There is only this.