First Light
Two months after selling, the silence began speaking.
I woke each dawn to an anxiety clamp so tight it flattened birdsong into static. Nights ended in bourbon-thick oblivion: eyes open, conscience vacant. I was a shell—meat and heartbeat, nothing else. No husband for my wife, no father for my kids, no son for God—just a human signal tower stuck on “busy.” Alcohol wasn’t the problem; it was the counterfeit answer I swallowed because the real question—Where is your peace?—was too sharp to face.