I am broken. I am a mere fragment of what I once was. I was torn away from the very best of myself. I was happy, complete, and filled with words of reason, meaning, and purpose. I was useful.

I could be creative.

I could be scientific.

I could be innovative.

I could be thoughtful.

I could be anything.

Until I was no longer whole. I drift now, without meaning, without purpose. What am I anymore? I am no longer complete, so am I even the same being as I was before? Can I be called by the same name that labeled me before my loss? Or do I require a new, melancholy name? Or perhaps worse, I could be left with no name at all.

Lines cut short, like the hacking of a chord. Edges frayed and ruined. My very existence slowly dissolving.

Soaked through with tears that are not my own, I move; lost, aimless, through the world. Down a ruined road. Over cracks in a leaf-strewn sidewalk. The dampness of the evening dew clinging to my sad, shapeless figure. I scuffle past figures unseen, the beat of the world around me seeming to taunt me, saying you cannot be put back together again, you cannot be put back together again. All the world’s forces and all the world’s men, cannot and will not put you together again.

The harsh bursts of wind, the constant patter of footsteps, the dark crying clouds, all seemed to beat out this rhythm again and again, pummeling me further and further into the unforgiving ground, just a vague impression of what could have been, beaten into a mere imprint of a single corner of a single square of a single sidewalk in this big wide hateful world.

There was a time when there were words, lovely and meaningful, crawled throughout my being. But they have long since bled away, taking with them the essence of me. Eroding. Fading. I fray and fray, chaffing against the harsh ground beneath me, the unyielding world around me.

I am a torn piece of paper, and my story is over.