So. Be. It.

He ripped off his shirt and hurled it into the roar of fans. “Love you! Love you!” Mira glared—that was the shirt she had bought him. Thread by thread, her offering vanished into the crush.

He strode toward her, euphoria in the heat of the crowd. “Your groupies,” she said. “That was the shirt I bought you.”

He shrugged, careless, still drunk on adoration. “I always do this after my shows. Maybe you shouldn’t come anymore.”

“But it was from me. Did that matter at all?”

“Baby, don’t start. I didn’t think. Sorry.”

He didn’t even remember. At home, he fell on their bed, still half-dressed, reeking of whiskey and sweat. Mira undressed him, as always. In his pocket, she found his guitar pick, warm from his skin. She held it tight.

The memory of the redhead—her laugh, her lipstick—needled her. I know, she thought. I know. She closed her fist around it and slipped down to the basement, where her anger swelled.

She clenched it until it cut, and the words came, jagged.

“Your voice, your song, your fire—I bind.

Let silence bite your tongue, choke you, body and mind.

By my will, by my spite, it is done.

The night is mine. The voice undone.

If it returns to me threefold, so be it.”

The first sign was small—a crack in his voice, a note gone sour. Then came the rumors: laryngitis, exhaustion. The papers wrote hopeful lies of a comeback. But Mira could hear it, the silence spreading.

Tours were canceled. Contracts faded. The house grew quiet, guitars abandoned, microphones gathering dust. He sat hunched in a corner, shaping words no one would ever hear. “What happened to my voice?” he mouthed.

Mira offered him nothing. Only a thin smile, metallic as the pick she still kept. The phone rang less. Friends vanished. Neighbors looked away.

The late mortgage notices arrived. She read them without flinching. So be it.