There’s this heaviness around her, like she’s supposed to feel things but can’t reach them anymore. The emotions are there — locked somewhere deep inside — but they only leak out in tiny flashes she doesn’t notice: a twitch of her fingers, a longer blink, a pause mid-sentence. She watches people like she’s studying a language she used to speak. You can tell she wants to feel again, but the wall she built around her heart is thick, and she doesn’t know how to break it without breaking herself.