The Algebra Of Aftermaths

Growing up we were told

A + B equals C.

They forgot to mention

Life isn’t that obedient.

It doesn’t follow algebra —

it follows aftermaths.

We grew up being told

every action has an equal and opposite reaction,

what no one ever tells you is

some reactions are delayed by decades,

or disguised in violent silences.

Or stone-cold grief.

Or your mother flinching at the sound of your voice

when you ask her if she's okay.

Life is not an equation.

It is in the in-betweens, the residue.

A chain reaction

of people fucking up other people

in the name of love,

in the name of camaraderie,

in the name of goddamn family.

People think life is an equation

they just haven’t solved yet.

But what if it was never solvable?

What if it’s a question paper

written in a dead dialect

on pages that catch fire when you read too close?

What if cause and effect

were never meant to rhyme?

What if they all they ever were,

was parallel parables?

What if trauma is a teacher

and memory is its chalkboard,

screeching names

you've spent a lifetime trying to erase?

You want answers.

Closure.

But closure is a lie

sold by therapists and fiction.

The world doesn’t end with a period.

It ends with an ellipsis 

spiralling inwards

until it has hit the bottom of the blackhole.

And most of us are still

trapped in mid-sentence —

mouths open,

hands trembling,

wondering what word comes next.

Some of us

never even got a verb.

We were raised by people

who swallowed their own names

and spat out manuals to existing.

We are not aftermaths.

We are afterthoughts.

We are the comma they forgot to erase —

the mistake in the margin

screaming for punctuation.

And we don’t end with a full stop.

We end mid-word,

mouth full of dust.