Nodus Tollens

There comes a night  

when the life you’ve been living  

tilts sideways—  

not enough to shatter, 

just enough to make everything familiar  

feel strangely misaligned, 

like someone rearranged the furniture  

inside your chest  

while you weren’t looking.  

You walk through your own days  

and the air feels off, 

as if the world is speaking  

in a dialect you used to understand  

but can’t quite translate anymore.  

Memories flicker at the edges, 

soft and unreliable, 

like film left too long in the sun.  

You reach for them  

and they pull back, 

as if they’re trying to protect you  

from the truth they carry.  

This is Nodus Tollens—  

the quiet, devastating moment  

when the story you’ve been telling yourself  

no longer matches the life you’re standing in.  

You try to follow the plot, 

but the lines blur, 

the chapters warp, 

and the person you were supposed to be  

feels like a ghost  

you keep brushing past  

in your own hallway.  

You look at your reflection  

and it looks back  

with a softness that hurts—  

a face that knows too much, 

a heart that’s been rewritten  

without your permission.  

And yet—  

in the disorientation, 

in the hollow pause  

between the life you imagined  

and the one you’re actually living—  

there is a strange, trembling grace.  

Because once the old meaning dissolves, 

once the narrative collapses  

into something unrecognizable, 

you are finally free  

to build a new one  

from the pieces that still glow  

when everything else goes dark.  

Even if the first step  

feels like walking into a story  

you haven’t learned how to read yet.  

-𝕃ℝ 🖤