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Instructions for Going Cold

I am

By Dagmar GoeschickPublished 9 months ago • 1 min read

Try to laugh.

Your mouth won’t open.

Good. Stop asking.

Try to smile.

Your face doesn’t remember how.

Let it forget.

Pull your skin straight.

It doesn’t move.

Your lips are tied shut like evidence.

Your eyes lock forward.

Don’t blink.

Your cheeks burn—

that’s rage, not warmth.

What happened to you?

Say it again. Louder.

No one answers.

What happened to your red lips?

Your blue eyes?

What happened to the person who used them?

Feel nothing.

Force it.

Fail at it.

Time stops.

You don’t move.

You don’t heal.

You stand there—

not alive, not dead—

a body full of pressure

with nowhere to go.

You are not frozen.

You are restrained.

You are not empty.

You are loaded.

Call it numbness if it helps.

Call it survival if it doesn’t.

You are not a ghost.

You are what remains

after everything that mattered

was taken without asking.

how to

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    Written by Dagmar Goeschick