Joe Arden

Grief is not sorrow. Sorrow is a guest who will leave. Grief is a parasite—it latches on, it feeds, it remakes. It is a rot that eats away at you and leaves only a husk. It is the weight pressing down on my chest with every breath, my dark shadow beside me, whispering I will never be whole again

And I—well, I am no longer a man. I am aftermath. I am ruin itself.

And the aftermath doesn’t heal. It haunts. Ruins do not heal.