Belonging is a foreign word - sharp-edged, elusive.

I’ve never felt it, not in my blood, not in this world.

Yet its pull is a human ache, circling my heart, unending.

 

I was younger then, softer, my dreams pliable.

Time has hardened those edges, worn them to stone.

Too fast. Too forced - with him.

 

A girl’s dreams: a castle wedding, a prince to save me from myself.

We plan; gods laugh.

 

He swept in like a storm - sudden and electric.

My son, barely five, called him Dad after three months,

his small voice weaving us into a fragile circle.

 

Happiness flickered, brief as a firefly.

A child conceived, a tiny heartbeat pulsing against the dark.

For a while, the whispers in my mind fell silent.

Normalcy felt possible, a closed loop of hope.

 

Then pain.

Blood on sheets, two months too soon.

The hospital’s cold white light burned my eyes.

He fainted when the doctor spoke;

I stood rigid, holding the truth like a blade.

 

She was born still - our daughter - her silence louder than any scream.

I named her Solitaire: a precious gem, alone, without us.

 

I wept once, alone, tears carving rivers.

My body had failed her.

Guilt coiled tight, an old wound torn open.

 

He broke too, the light in his eyes dimmed.

We married anyway, in a castle,

my dress a heavy tribute to a queen I’d never be.

 

The wedding ring, a cold circle on my finger,

promised eternity but felt like a noose.

 

He didn’t like the dress - but he said yes.

His voice was hollow, his heart elsewhere.

A part of him had died with her.

 

We tried for normal. Devastating in its emptiness.

Days that felt endless,

nights with unseen tears

on both sides of the bed.

 

I lost my fire, clung to the vow.

Grey skies bled into cold nights.

He grew distant, a stranger in our home.

 

I begged myself to stay; he begged me not to go.

But the circle broke.

I couldn’t breathe there anymore.

 

Two sentences in a courtroom.

Over.

 

He married again, too soon, a woman with my name.

Gods laughed, cruel and loud, their jest a twisted circle.

 

Years later, a call in the dead of night:

“Help me. I’m drowning.”

 

His voice cracked, desperate.

I tried to reach him, but I was no savior.

 

A crisp fall day. Another call.

He’d ended it - alone.

 

The gods wept.

 

Solitaire is no longer alone.

He’s with her now, holding her in a place I can’t reach,

both shattered by my love, or its absence.

 

When I look in the mirror, I see my soul weeping,

knowing all is a circle, birth, loss, love, death,

spiraling endlessly.

 

But the woman in me, frozen in time, stands still,

searching for belonging in a world that turns without her.

 

Yet in the quiet, a faint spark stirs,

a whisper of fire, daring to burn again.