The hyphen is the pause between the tear and the falling apart. It is the split second of choice. You can let the rip widen into an abyss. Or you can stand at its edge and realize: this is where I begin .

But here is the brutal truth: the origin-rip- cannot be sewn shut.

There is a specific moment in the darkroom of memory when the negative is exposed for the first time. Before the rip, we exist in a state of warm, muffled potential—a singularity of pure is . Then comes the tear. Not a cut—surgical, precise—but a rip . Jagged. Auditory. The sound of a self being separated from the whole.