𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗬: "The Abandoned Sculpture" by Irish M. Sanchez

 

Published by: Jeralaine G. Larios 

Date Published: July 29, 2025

Time Published: 2:28 PM

Category: Prose

Subject: When love molds you, then vanishes—leaving you grieving in that shape forever.

You were the first.

You were the first to hold me. The first person who looked at me like I was unfinished clay worth sculpting. Like I was raw soil, soft, shapeless, with no life. You placed your hands on me gently, then all at once, it felt like you were meant to create a masterpiece out of the bits I offered you.

You didn't build a life with me. You built me.

You were the first to get that deep. The first to mark me in places no one else even bothered to see. You sculpted me with love.

And with you gone in my life, I don't know how to be a person without your hands molding me.

Your name was the blueprint of who I became before I even understood what it meant to belong to someone. Every time I speak, I sound like someone who used to be yours—someone who you used to touch and care for.

I carry your voice like an echo. Your name etched itself into the way I breathe, the way I move through the world. You're in the energy shot I can't drink anymore. The mirror I can't look into without seeing the version of me you once loved.

And now—now you're gone, and I'm still full of you.

The pain of being half-created wakes me up every day. Like, I'm still waiting for your hands to return. To finish me. To hold me again like you did the first time you shaped the curve of my name in your mouth and made it feel like it belonged somewhere.

Because when you lose the hands of the one who shaped you, what are you but an abandoned sculpture? Half-formed. Fragile.

There's no exorcising you. I've tried. God, I'm tired of trying. People tell me I'll heal. That I'll move on. But do I want to? I cannot help but bleed you—through the cracks where love once dwelled, I bear the unfinished, neglected version of me, hoping the sculptor will return to carve meaning out of me again. But deep down, I know they've long set down their chisel, leaving me forgotten.

Still, I wait, blindly devoted to a ghost, holding on to the memory of a touch that once made me think I could be more.