Life splits in two the second you lose a child. There’s before and there’s after. Before was seven hours and nineteen minutes in a dark theater, the entire Nolan, Batman trilogy in a single sitting and you grinning at me through a mouthful of Sour Patch Kids, teeth glowing like a jack-o’-lantern in the dim light. It was frozen Coke dripping down your wrist because you held the cup too tight during the fight scenes. It was Whittaker and Romero 2, the roar of Chicago, the way you practically floated when Dana White grabbed you for a picture—your grin telling me, This is it. You’re doing it right. It was those goddamn short films, half-baked ideas and duct-taped props, where we didn’t care if they were good because it was us making them. Father and son, building something real out of nothing.

And then came after. That call. That fucking call. In some dead Indiana parking lot that stank of piss and stale cigarettes, the sky too blank, too indifferent. The words didn’t make sense, not at first. I just stood there, the phone slipping from my hand, staring at the cracks in the pavement as if my soul was spilling through every jagged line. And then, smashing my forehead over and over on that torn concrete until the blood seeped into the cracks, following my soul into the void. That was the moment I learned what real hell is. It’s not fire or pitchforks or devils; it’s standing in the middle of nowhere knowing the only thing that mattered is gone. It’s remembering the grin you gave me in that theater and knowing I’ll never see it again. It’s the torture of memory—every golden moment tipped with barbs now, gutting me every time I dare to look back.

And then there’s him. The dealer. The worthless, bottom-feeding coward who handed you that poisoned pill—a devil in a hoodie, trading death for pocket change. I see his face in my dreams, over and over again. I imagine all the ways I could make him bleed, suffer, break. My hands on his throat, squeezing until one of his eyes pops out and he’s gasping for air while I laugh and squeeze harder, just enough for him to feel what he’s taken from me. I want him to feel it—the endless, searing agony of a father who’s lost his son. I imagine cutting his fingers off with his own wire cutters so he can never hand over another fentanyl-laced counterfeit pill, leaving him as useless as the soul he sold long ago.

But then comes the letdown. Sanity slipping back in, a bitter taste of restraint that almost feels like defeat. Because vengeance is useless. It won’t bring you back. It won’t undo the call, or the parking lot, or the crack in my soul that will never close. And yet, the thought of him walking free, dealing death to someone else’s kid, keeps me up at night. That rage is the only fire I’ve got left, the only thing keeping the void from swallowing me whole.

So I rage. I dream of blood. And I write it all down because it’s the only way to survive another day in purgatory. This is the after. It’s torture. It’s rage. It’s love twisted into something unrecognizable. It’s the weight of what could’ve been, dragging me toward the grave. And still, I wake up every day wishing, screaming, dreaming for a world where you were still here.