"It Hurts, Literally"

[Ophi 258]

"I miss you so much it hurts."

commonly mistaken for metaphor.

often, not.

 

There is a place in the brain,

small, indifferent, precise,

that does not care

whether the pain comes from a blade

or from absence.

 

It lights the same.

 

The same signals fire,

the same dull ache spreads

through the chest,

through the ribs,

through the quiet spaces

you once filled without trying.

 

Your body remembers you

in ways I cannot control.

 

Not as thoughts,

thoughts I could manage,

could push aside,

could reshape into something easier.

 

No,

 

as reaction.

 

As instinct.

 

As something deeper than language.

 

My hands reach for you

before I remember you’re gone.

 

My chest tightens

before my mind can correct it.

 

There is a moment,

brief, cruel, automatic,

where my body still believes

you exist just out of reach.

 

And then,

 

it learns again.

 

This is what missing you is.

 

Not poetry,

not longing dressed in soft words,

 

but misfiring signals,

confused pathways,

a system built for connection

searching for something

that no longer responds.

 

Dopamine remembers you.

Serotonin notices your absence.

Oxytocin,

God, oxytocin refuses to let go.

 

It lingers in the bloodstream

like a promise unfulfilled,

like a touch that never finished happening.

 

They say time rewires the brain.

 

That the pathways weaken,

that the response dulls,

that eventually

the body forgets what it was expecting.

 

But they don’t say

how long that takes.

 

They don’t say

how many times

your body will ache for something

it can no longer have.

 

Because this is not just memory.

 

This is chemistry.

 

This is the body

trying to return to a state

that required you.

 

And when it fails,

 

it hurts.

 

Not figuratively.

 

Not beautifully.

 

Not in a way that can be admired

from a distance.

 

But here,

in the chest,

in the throat,

in the quiet, involuntary clench

of muscles that remember holding you.

 

So when I say

"I miss you so much it hurts,"

 

understand,

 

I mean my body is grieving you

in a language older than words,

 

and it does not yet know

how to stop.

[KeiaTypeBeat 3277]

I miss being held so much it hurts