The morning after Shayna passed, I lay in my bed and thought about disappearing.

Not because I wanted to die. Well, not exactly. But because I couldn’t bear the thought of what time might do to her.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I was terrified that if I kept living, she would fade. That grief would do what grief supposedly does: soften at the edges, blur, retreat. That the sharpness of her — her laugh, her voice, the particular way she moved through a room — would eventually smooth itself into something vague and distant.

I didn’t want a memory. I wanted her.

And I was afraid that the longer I lived, the more time would take from me. That she would become a ghost — not the kind that haunts, but the kind that disappears.

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