There are two pairs of shoes by the door -
one pair is clean and the other is covered in leaves and mud.
There are two voices in the kitchen -
one is singing and the other is laughing.
Both are tinged with tender love and adorned with happiness.

There are two pairs of socked feet going up the staircase -
one is confident in their stride and the other is stumbling with drunkenness.

Drunk on love, of course.

There's one voice that can be heard in the darkness of the bedroom -
a voice that says something along the lines of, You look beautiful.

There's a shy laugh. As always, the second voice will follow. You can't even see me.

Both voices will become one when they breathe into each other, disappear into one another. There won't be anything in the world that can distinguish them. They've always been the same, after all.

Your heart will continue to beat,
your blood will continue to claim you.
But, please. Come back to me.

I'm unclaimed, no longer part of this world -
being untethered is all that I am.
How can you continue to breathe when I'm in a different world, banging on the wall between us and begging you to hear me?

Don't you hear me?
Stop looking at what is in front of you and listening to the words that are being said. See the person that's invisible to you and hear their silent pleas.
Don't be purposefully blind.

*I'm right here.

I want to write about the strength of your hand when you held me before you left,
I want to write about the way your voice broke when you tried to say you were sorry,
I want to write about the way you sounded when you cried.

There are so many things I want to write about -
but I'm afraid.

This desire of mine will hurt me more than anything else.
It will hurt me because to write about you is like wrapping my heart in barbed wire and taking it out of my chest because it doesn't belong there anymore.
This desire of mine may **** me. But, don't we all die in the end?

You already know that.
The pain will last for only a moment -
but I do have a reason for being afraid.

A moment can last a lifetime.
I've been living in the moment of your absence for my entire life.

When it rains, I see your tears. When I'm in a crowded room, all I hear is your voice. When I close my eyes and try to fall asleep, I can feel you holding onto my arm until it begins to hurt.

This is what I'm living in and this is what I want to write about.
After all, I will die if I decide to write and I will still die an even harsher death if I continue to live this way.

For me, love is a desert.
It's a horizon that never ends and a scorching heat that burns my skin when I walk.
It's sore feet and a mouth that hasn't had a drop of water in years.

There is no oasis.

For me, love is dust that coats my body. Sand that irritates my eyes and gets in my hair. Love is an attempt to speak but no sound leaving my throat when I try.

Love is no one. Love is nowhere. Love is nothing.
Night never comes, an oasis never appears, a gust of wind never blows my tears away.
This is love.

Self pity is strange -
it makes you acknowledge that there's a separate part of you looking down on a lesser version of, well, you.

Can we be lesser in some parts, and greater in others?

When I look in the mirror and see a woman who has no courage to let any tears fall, a woman who fears what comes after the rain has left, a woman who is barely breathing -
does she exist?

When I look in the mirror and see a woman who has cried so long that her eyelids are swollen, a woman who gladly walks outside when the rain has stopped, a woman who is breathing so much that her heart is asking for mercy -
does she exist?

I know these two women have the same face, the same eyes, the same trembling hands, the same black ink that litters their skin.

But I'm concerned with what the mirror doesn't show. Are they the same on the inside?

Do their hearts beat in tandem?
Do they recognize each other?

I think one of them would place a palm over her chest and the other would allow a tear to fall.
That would be the only answer I need -
after all, they know more about me than I do.

You can spend days, weeks, or months talking to someone -
but in the end, you don't really know them at all.

They can be the first thing you think of in the morning and the last thing that crosses your mind before you fall asleep -
but in the end, you don't really know them at all.

They can make you smile when they send you pictures of what they're doing throughout the day, what sights they're seeing, or how sweet they look when it's cold outside and they're bundled up -
but in the end, you don't really know them at all.

In the end, they can invite you over for dinner and a movie and it'll be the first time you meet. It'll feel nice when they hold you in their arms and carefully trail a single finger down your lower back.

It'll feel nice when they pull you closer and kiss you, your socked feet trailing down their leg.

It'll feel confusing when they pull away and tell you to follow them to their bedroom.
It'll feel strange when they shut and lock the door behind them, gesturing towards their bed.
It'll feel uncomfortable when they climb on top of you and take your pants off. Your underwear is thrown away, too.

"No ***. Okay?"

It won't feel okay when they *******, regardless of what you've said. Who knew a ceiling could look so interesting in the dark?

It won't feel good when you lay there and realize you're being used. Who knew my first time would be so ******* memorable?

You can spend a long time believing that the world is perfectly defined and that the people within it are as raw as the sunsets we witness everyday.

But the sun never truly disappears. Our eyes are fooled by the coming of night, the arrival of the moon and the stars. Those never truly disappeared, either.

They were just hiding in plain sight.

You can spend a long time believing that you know someone, that everything they truly are is within reach -
but then you would just be fooling yourself.

People are not sunrises and sunsets.
They're everything in between -
dreams, fears, locked doors, eyes squeezed tight, and a smiling face in the dark.

In the end, you need to wake up.

The worst thing,
the one thing that breaks my heart the most when I think of them -
is that they were in love. They were. I swear my entire life on it.

How can two people be so perfect for each other, so loving when it came to the way they walked together through this life, and then suddenly fall apart? Why? Can you give me any sort of rational explanation for that?

I saw the way they comfortably held hands while they were driving,
I heard the way she laughed when he acted like a fool,
I felt the way he loved her when they kissed in front of me.

How did it end up like this?
I saw the way they didn't acknowledge each other at all,
I heard the way she cried when he yelled terrible things,
I felt the way he hated her when he tried to end her life in front of me.

How did we end up here?
I came from each of them but now that they are apart, I feel like I've been split in two. I'm not whole anymore.
I would say they aren't, either, but nothing in this life makes sense at all.

Maybe they were never complete in the first place -
maybe I've been dreaming this entire time and nothing about my body or mind is real.

My brown eyes are not his brown eyes,
my brown hair is not her brown hair,
my name is not their name.
Their blood is not my blood and their voices do not combine to make one.

I have never been theirs, and they have never been mine.
Is that the truth? Is that what this has come to? Is that what I've been running from this entire time? Is that what they already knew but neglected to think about? To remember? To realize?

You want to know what I think? I don't think anything,
I don't have any ******* thoughts because they were me. They are me. I am them. I was them.

We were one in the same and now that they are gone,
I am nothing. I am nothing.
I never existed and perhaps the saddest thing,
the one thing that breaks what I have left of an already broken heart,
is that I never existed to them.

They didn't see me. They didn't see the beautiful thing they made together, the one thing left in this world that proves there was a them in the first place.