The Arithmetic of Letting Go

There was a hand once — open, unhurried, sure of itself, the kind that reached for things before it knew their names.

Then came the scissors. Small. Precise. Labeled neatly — a. — as if loss, too, follows an instruction manual, as if every wound has its proper terminology.

One by one, the fingertips left. Not with violence. Not with sound. But along a dotted line — the way all honest departures move — in a quiet, patient arc toward a point called b., which is simply the name we give to the place we never planned to reach.

What remains is still a hand.

Still open.

Still cast against the red

of a world that did not stop

to mourn the pieces.

🎁 A gift for readers: download the wallpaper version of this artwork. [Get this wallpaper]

And perhaps that is the thing nobody tells you — that falling apart has a geometry, that every fragment of yourself which drifts away was already tracing the curve of its own going.

The hand does not chase. The hand does not close. It holds the space between its fingers the way the sky holds dawn — not grasping, not fearing, only open to whatever remains after the scissors have passed and the dotted lines run out.

Some things are not broken. They are simply rearranged into a shape that took the long way home.