They said it like it meant nothing.
“Just business.”
As if that made it cleaner.
Less personal.
As if the thing you built from scraps and soul
was just a line on a spreadsheet.

But it wasn’t just business.
It was your child.
Your purpose.
Your reason to get out of bed when nothing else made sense.

And you had to watch it die.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Like a lightbulb flickering,
while you pretended everything was fine.

Smiling in meetings.
Answering emails with steady fingers.
Saying “We’re adapting,”
when what you really meant was “We’re unraveling.”

You held it in your hands like something sacred,
but the world treated it like inventory.

And now it’s gone.
No grand collapse.
Just… gone.

And still, you check the website.
Like a parent driving past a hospital long after the monitors went dark.
You type the domain like a habit,
as if it might still be breathing,
as if maybe someone brought it back while you weren’t looking.

But it’s frozen.
No updates.
No movement.
Just the bones of what used to be your everything.

People say it happens.
They say businesses come and go.
They don’t ask how you’re sleeping.
They don’t know about the ache that clings to your chest
like a phantom limb.

Because to them, it was just work.
Just risk.
Just one of those things.

But to you—
it was the most alive you ever felt.

And now there’s a silence in your life
that no one recognizes as grief.