The Heaviest Empty Thing

We all hold onto things.
Maybe it’s an old movie ticket in your wallet. Maybe it’s a t-shirt that is too full of holes to wear, but you can’t throw it away. We keep these things because we are scared to forget. We think if we lose the object, we lose the memory.
But sometimes, the things we hold onto are heavy. Even if they look empty to everyone else.
I wrote a little story about that feeling. It’s about a woman named Anna and a very special jar.
It goes like this.
The jar sat on the highest shelf.
To anyone else, it looked empty. Just a plain glass jar with a rusty lid.
But to Anna, it was the heaviest thing in the world.
She had closed that lid three years ago. She closed it right in the hospital room, the exact second He stopped breathing. She had caught his very last breath.
It was all she had left. A tiny pocket of air that used to be inside him.
Then came the earthquake.
It wasn’t a big one. Just a small rumble.
But the shelf shook.
Smash.
The sound was like a gunshot in her tired heart.
Time froze. Inside her mind, the floor disappeared. She was falling into a dark, cold ocean with no bottom. The panic hit her like a wave of ice water, choking her, freezing her lungs.
She didn’t scream. She dropped to her knees.
She scrambled frantically. She cupped her hands together, trying to scoop up the air from the floor. She waved her arms, trying to catch the invisible wind before it floated away.
“Get back in,” she whispered. “Please.”
It was like trying to hold a ghost. It was like trying to stitch water back together.
She pressed her face to the floorboards. She inhaled deeply. She tried to breathe him in, to catch that one specific breath and keep it safe inside her own body.
But the air just tasted like dust.
He was gone. Truly gone this time.
She stayed there, curled up in a ball on the cold floor. She reached out and grabbed a handful of the broken glass.
She squeezed her fist tight.
The shards cut into her skin. Warm blood trickled down her wrist. It stung. It burned.
But she didn’t open her hand. She squeezed tighter.
Because this sharp, stinging pain was the only thing she had left to feel.
The air had vanished. But the wound was fresh. And she knew she would carry this scar forever.