Shards and Seconds

Last night will live in me
not as a memory,
but as a scar —
a scene of chaos, blood, and survival
painted in the quiet hours
between 1 and 2 a.m.

Darkness held me,
my leg moved before thought,
before light,
before sense —
and there it was:
a sheet of glass,
shattering not just under me,
but into me.

One second.
Just one.
Too late.
The sound hit me first,
but my body was already forward.
The shards kissed my skin,
tore it open,
and red poured out like
a crime I didn’t commit.

The room was no longer my room.
It was a crime scene.
Tissues, wet wipes,
all red.
I was alone.
Family and relatives downstairs,
Dashain night heavy in the air.
No water.
No voice.
Just me and the pain.

Dizziness came —
but I stayed.
I raised my leg,
pressed the wound,
and found a strange stillness,
a calm I didn’t know I had.
My mind shifted gears
like some hidden machine
built for moments like this.
I wasn’t thinking.
I was acting.
And I saved myself.

By morning,
blood-stained floors told my story.
Shock filled my family’s faces.
They saw what I had endured
and what I had survived.

Now the pain lingers.
My foot still swollen,
parts of it numb —
almost dead.
But I walk.
I heal.
And I sleep,
because sleep feels like
the only quiet thing left.

Looking back feels surreal.
It’s as if I stepped outside myself
and met someone else there —
someone who could handle
what I thought I couldn’t.

Last night, I could all see was 
the cost of a second.
The power of calm.
The edge where instinct lives.
And now I wander inside myself,
asking,
who was that?
Who am I
when the world breaks
and I don’t?

 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Written on   Oct 3, 025