What Remains After Overflow

She met him at a time when she had just started learning how to breathe without gasping.

He was sunlight, too bright too fast, and she, foolish and aching, ran straight into it. She called it warmth. She didn’t notice the burn until much later.

He never asked her to love him. But she did anyway. She loved the way water bends around stone—softly, insistently, reshaping herself in the process. He took what he needed, unaware or uninterested in what it cost her to offer it. Each time she stepped away to tend to her bleeding, she stitched herself up just enough to return.

She told herself she was choosing him. But in truth, she was choosing the version of herself that only existed in his gaze—the girl who could give endlessly and still believe it was love.

Every time she left, she whispered to her heart that it was the last. And every time it whimpered back, “Just once more.” Not for hope. For habit.

Years passed this way, until one evening, she poured herself into the quiet. Not to escape, but to listen.

She sat at the edge of her bed, holding a note he would never read, and finally asked, What happens when the well runs dry? She waited for the sob from her heart, but it didn’t come.

Her love had returned to her, exhausted and hollow-eyed. This time, it said nothing. It simply curled itself into the corners of her chest and went still.

There would be no more letters, no more soft returns, no more bleeding for someone who never stayed long enough to watch the healing.

In the silence, she touched her own hand, as if recognizing herself for the first time.

This, she thought, is what remains after overflow.