The Wound Without a Name

People say, “You dodged a bullet,” as if the story ends there. As if walking away means the ground didn’t shake. But sometimes the shot lands close enough that the air splits beside you, close enough that the heat of it grazes bone, close enough that you feel something inside you shift out of place.

You keep moving.

On the outside, it looks like survival.

Inside, you’re gathering the small, sharp pieces no one else notices — the ones that settled quietly in the places you don’t show anyone.

It wasn’t the worst that could have happened.

And somehow that makes it harder to name.

There’s no dramatic wound to point to, just the ache that rises in certain kinds of silence, the tenderness around the parts of you still learning not to flinch.

They call it luck.

But you remember the sound of impact, how close it came, how something in you hasn’t fully landed since.

Not a clean escape.

Not a fatal blow.

Just a life you’re stitching back together from the fragments the blast left behind.