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.

I never should have said anything -
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I didn't.
The words were pulled out of me like an anchor hauled from choppy waters -
I had no choice when it came to if they were going to be revealed or not.

"Have you ever been suicidal?"
"Uh, yes."
"Are you currently suicidal?"
"Um. I don't really feel comfortable talking about it, to be honest."
"I'm going to make you an appointment with one of our crisis counselors. I think it would be a good idea..."

It's not funny at all to find yourself in an office with a person who genuinely believes they have the capabilities to fix you.
I know I want to die. I know nothing is going to change that.

I find it more saddening to sit across from a person who looks at you with false pity. They can't fix anyone and I know, deep down, they're waiting for me to leave.

I'm waiting for myself to leave, too. I should have just kept my mouth shut like I always do -
Never let it slip that you have the desire to be dead. What ensues afterwards is more humiliating than the moment you finally do **** yourself.

Eyes heavy with sleep,
limbs weighed down by something that could be called love -
It's been a couple of hours since we spoke and I'm a fool for missing you.

I really shouldn't get ahead of myself -
you're probably tucked into clean sheets and dreams that don't involve shaky hands and warm lips.

It's not about me, shouldn't be about what I want and what I need.

But I want you more than a little girl wants a night light in her room -
And I need you more than a budding flower needs rainwater in a dry season.

I hope you wake up soon and, without acknowledging what I've been asking for, give me anything you're willing to give.

I find it hard to decide -
if our tragedy is defined by loving each other or by not loving at all.

Would life have been any different if I had not felt my heart collapse within my chest, or watched you leave a hundred times over?
I don't think anything would have changed at all -
because in the end, you are always gone.

That is something that will never change,
no matter what lies my heart tries to tell itself. You are gone.

I don't feel any pity for my heart when it's tucked into a dark corner,
barely alive on its last few beats. It's abandoned and I can hear it shedding tears from across the room.

Come back, it cries.
It has the face of a little girl and her brown eyes are wet, long lashes dripping with memories. They splatter on the floor and become nothing in an instant.

She's clutching her hands against her chest -
such a tight grip for small, shaky hands. I don't feel any pity. I don't.
There's nothing I can do for her. Nothing at all.

Come back! she screams. She's too weak to crawl, too tired to run.

She stops beating within me the moment she whispers, please. Her dead body is left, untouched, in that dark corner where it'll never be found.
There's nothing I can do for her. Nothing at all.

The biggest tragedy, I've come to realize, is not the fact that you left me so many times. It's how slowly the realization of your loss crept into me when I wasn't looking, wasn't paying attention, wasn't thinking of you.

You made me leave myself and now I'm left with nothing at all.

When I look at you,
something strange yet familiar washes over me.

I stand under the shower of emotion -
lathering it into my hair, scrubbing it roughly into my skin, allowing it to wash away every sin I've ever had.

I've had many, so I stand here for a long time.

But your voice, your voice calls to me and beckons me to come out.

Come out of there. Come to me. You're clean now.

I've never been clean, or at least I don't remember a time when I wasn't. But I trust you. Your eyes are gentle and there's no hint of malice in the corners of your mouth when I step into the room.

Come here.

I sit next to you on the bed and you pull me into your side, my head instinctively seeking the beat of your heart.
It mimics the single thought that throbs in some dark corner of my mind.

I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.

Trusting another heart has been my biggest sin. But this doesn't feel wrong.

Maybe I'm making a mistake,
but everything about this feels right.

Who could ever love a woman like you?

You came from deep within the ground - out of a crevice where nothing should have survived.
You crawled out, knees ****** and jaw broken, and stumbled to your feet.

You walked alone until you found something on the ground -
a bud, a seed, a sign of life.

You laid next to it and, although you didn't realize it then, protected that unfamiliar thing with your life.

A life you now carried on your own because you had survived. You have survived.

And this bud, this seed, this beautiful thing -
you will protect it from harm and try with everything you have left in you to let it grow. Let it thrive. Let it become what it's meant to be.

Who couldn't ever love a woman like you?

I've been standing at the edge of the ocean for a long time -
watching the crystalline waves when they come close and yearn to touch my skin.

Just like how I want to touch yours.

There's been a thousand sunrises and a thousand sunsets -
after a lifetime or two, they don't really matter anymore.

I remember the way you looked when you left -
although your back was turned towards me,
I felt each tear when it bled across your face.

When you looked into the horizon and silently begged
for the courage to go, I felt it through each chamber of my heart.

Seeing is believing, they say.
I don't really believe you wanted to go.

When I speak of words that can make you believe you are nothing, of hands that hold you so tight you can't breathe, of eyes that are always there when you lay in bed at night -
I hope you don't understand what I'm talking about.

When I stand in the shower for two hours and look at the scars on my body, at the fine lines that will remain there until the end of time -
I hope you don't understand what I'm thinking about.

When I'm sitting in the passenger seat while you drive and staring at the people and places that pass us by, at the mother and father holding their child's hand while they walk down the pavement -
I hope you don't understand why I need to hold your hand for the rest of the trip.

When we're facing each other in bed, hearts beating together, and you rest a heavy hand on my face and whisper I love you -
I hope you understand why I can only answer with tears.

Today, I poured tears all over my notebook.
Although my eyes are red-rimmed and I'd rather keep the journal closed, I'll share with you something I wrote.

I am dying. I am dying. Piece by piece, the pieces that were me are dying. They're going away. Everything that made me who I am is going away, it's gone. I can't keep it.

I don't know if I'm supposed to decide if that's a good or bad thing. Maybe it doesn't have to be either. But I can feel it. I feel it.

It's like tearing a tree from the ground. A big tree with a wide trunk that has been standing for so long, through every season and year. And now something, some unseen force, is chopping me down and taking my branches and leaves and roots away.

Everything that makes me who I am.

I don't know what to do. My memories are disappearing and gone. I don't want to be chopped down. I didn't want this and it's happening anyway.

The worst kind of torment is when you know things used to be a certain way and now you know they're different. When a certain time used to be something good and happy and loving and you took it for granted.

You were an idiot and took it for granted and now it's gone.

Now you're sitting here with your heart in your hands and you don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Nothing makes sense.

I have memories and those hurt the most. Do you know how many times I've tried to say goodbye to them, to my memories? So many times. I bury the memories somewhere and they come back, they always come back and hurt me. Even the good ones. Everything hurts me. They hurt me over and over again.

They leave me over and over again. They left me so many times, I lost count. I don't even know if they were really here at all. Something inside of me tells me, no, they weren't. They were never really with you.

I feel empty most days. Like the tree that has finally been chopped down and left for dead.

Have I ever been afraid of dying? No. I've died many times.

I died when they left me in that desert, I died when they forced me to make a choice I didn't want to make, I died when she left in the middle of the night and never came back, I died when I had to say goodbye to my sister, I died when I realized that my love died out a long time ago and wouldn't return.

It won't return because the people I love are dead. They've been gone for such a long time. How long is a long time? It's longer than forever.

*They've been gone for lifetimes and won't come back.

It's been you since the beginning.

Although you weren't in the same room or in the same point of time, you were there when I took my first breath.

I saw you. You were looking at me with those eyes - they were both a greeting and a goodbye. That's how things work in this life, you know.

I heard your voice. I couldn't tell if you were laughing or crying - but aren't they the same? Your message was clear to me. I'm here.

I felt your heart. Do you want to know how? Come closer and I'll tell you.

You and I are the same. We're one. When I took my first breath, you took your last.

I wish it wasn't this way. I wanted to delay what I knew was inevitable.

I'm sorry.

Don't be. You didn't do anything wrong. This is how things work, remember?
Just come closer and kiss me. That's all I want before you go. Tell me our secret in my ear.  

*You and I are the same. We're one. One day, I will take my first and last breath with you.

Sometimes feelings don't hit you until you're ready.

In the midst of battle, we have to be strong. We cannot be vulnerable when we are being watched, being attacked, being torn apart.

You cannot shed tears when your enemy is standing in front of you, yelling words that might as well be bullets because they sting when they hit your body.

But you're strong. You're bulletproof.

You fight back with everything you have. You close your eyes, keep your mouth shut, tuck away all of the parts of you that are fragile.
You lock them inside of your chest, deep down, and throw away the key.

The enemy never leaves. They are always there.
Everyday is a battle - every moment is spent looking behind your shoulder, every second of every day is spent brandishing your weapon.

You cannot sleep. There is no such thing as being safe. You cannot do anything but survive.

One day, you will find yourself alone. You will continue to survive even if the enemy is not in front of you, no longer in sight.

We've been doing this for so long that it becomes a part of us.
Did you know things can become a part of you without you realizing it?

You should probably look down at yourself and see if you are wounded - if your body is littered with cuts and gunshot wounds and if your fingernails are caked with blood.

We don't realize how long we've been fighting. We'll **** anyone that tries to take our weapon, our last bit of primal defense. Every single person we see is the enemy and we are ready to fight them off.

We could never anticipate the feelings.

Feelings are snakes in the bushes, slithering their way across our bodies while we try to sleep. They bite and infect us with their poison until we wake up screaming, clawing at our chests to get the venom out.

Feelings are butterflies in the sun, coming closer to us and settling on our clothes. We try to step away and avoid them. They land in our hair and sit in the palms of our hands, content with a place to rest.

One day, we will find ourselves alone and it will be more terrifying than waiting for the enemy to appear.

We will bury our weapon in the dirt because the feeling that begins to bloom in our chest will be unbeatable. We will rest our head in our hands and bite our lip until it's bleeding. We will squeeze our eyes shut so the only thing we see is darkness.

When the feeling hits, there is no defending yourself.

*You have survived.

They ask me a question.
What are we without love?

I am this. In this moment, I am not love.

Have you ever seen the aftermath of a plane crash?
The plane simply becomes an empty shell and bodies are strewn across the earth. There are no heaving lungs, no crying eyes, no twitching fingers.

Every living thing is dead. That's what I am.

Don't ever let anyone fool you into believing that you can't be dead in this life. You can and you will be.
There will be a moment when no heart pulses behind your ribs, no tears are left, and your hands feel nothing tangible.

It will only be you and the ground. You'll look up into the sky and maybe, just maybe, ask a question.

"What are we without love?"

This is that moment. Close your eyes and feel all of it.

In the end, everyone forgets.

There's a distant memory of me sitting in the passenger seat of a car -
my mom is driving and it's nighttime.
I'm very little.

Outside, it's pitch black except for a few sparse city lights in the distance and the never-ending stars above. In front of us, there is only a dark road.

I start crying all of a sudden. Heavy tears make me shake and it's as if there's a violent wave racking my small body from side to side, forcing me to drown.

"Gigi? What's wrong?"

I cry harder. She wants to know why I'm sad, of course she does. It's just making my chest hurt because I can't say it. I don't know how. Please, don't make me say it.

"Sweetheart..."

She rubs my arm and I look out the window, wiping away my truths. I look into that void and see it as clear as the slash of a blade.

"You're going to be dead one day."

In the end, everyone forgets.
It's the only thing I can hold onto in this life, even if it slips through my fingers and leaves nothing behind.

It's the only thing I've ever known and ever will be.

You do not know pain until you tell someone you love them,
and they don't reply.

You do not know anger until someone tells you they love you,
and they have been gone forever.

You do not know love until you tell each other I love you,
and neither of you mean the same thing.

I just want to hear you calling my name.
And for me to say, yes? What do you need?

I want to sit behind you
and kiss all the freckles you have across your shoulders.
To rest my hands across your stomach and feel it trembling -
feel its warmth and softness as you consume my love.

I want you to close your eyes
and rest your head on my shoulder,
to make me laugh when your hair tickles my nose.

I want to hear you say, Oops. Sorry about that.

I'll just love you a little bit extra, because everything you do is lovely to me.
And even when a moan escapes your lips as my kisses relocate to your neck, no one will be sorry about that.

I'll just hold your belly when it quivers. I'll just listen to your voice shake when you whisper, Please. More.

I'll give you whatever you want because I'm starving for it, too.

There's a large whirlpool in my dreams -
I sit at the top of a cliff and watch everything in the water
go around and around until it disappears.

What's in the water?

Well, there's only one thing. They're memories.
Memories of us in Paris, Rome, New Mexico, our bed.
Memories of you laughing so hard until you beg me to stop talking.
Memories of him dancing and singing until we all beg him to stop embarrassing us.
Memories of me in between you two, happy, as you both talk over me when you think I'm asleep.

You are asleep. You've been sleeping for a long time.

Have I? That can't be right. All of this didn't feel like a dream.

It was. All of it. I'm sorry you had to find out this way.

The whirlpool seems to be forever -
the memories are endless and all I can do is look down, watching them go away one by one.  

No, this isn't right at all. None of this was fake. It wasn't a dream.

Yes, it was. You need to accept it and let go.

No.
Standing up, I take a look around. I take a step closer to the edge.
Right there. I can see it towards the center.

There's a memory in the water, barely visible.

It's a child standing in a desert, crying out as the people she loves most in this world leave her. The car kicks up dust and the sun beats down on her when she chases after it, finally falling to the ground in defeat.

"Mommy! Daddy! It's me!"

That's the dream. That's what I should be going after.
It's been hiding among love. In between bed sheets and music and laughter.

You're making a mistake. It's just another memory.

No, it's not just another memory. Far from it. It's the truth and I'm going to follow it. I should have followed it a long time ago.

I take another step closer to the edge. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. In and out. Within and without.

When I open my eyes, I jump into the whirlpool.

For a long time, I didn't want to write because I was afraid of what would show up on my paper.
I avoided pencils, notebooks, and my therapist's advice to write down the feelings you have.

I know now that my mind was simply trying to protect me -
you see, the things I felt and the people I loved were too painful to think about.

I couldn't pick up a pencil and write in a notebook because that would have been the equivalent to picking up a handgun and loading it with bullets.

If I had followed through and pushed away my fear, I would probably be dead now. My notebook would be covered in blood.

Sometimes fear is a good thing - it keeps us alive when we need to be.

Tears sting my eyes when I read the words.

They never loved you. If they did, they wouldn't have hurt you.

That's not true. Sometimes the people we love hurt us and they don't mean to, deep down.

Sometimes the people we love yell at us when they're angry and sometimes they leave in the middle of the night.

They still love me even if they don't apologize afterwards or return in the morning.

Tears sting my eyes when I remember the words.
They are the same people that said this:

We are so proud of you, Gigi. You will always be our little girl. We love you so much.

The same mouth that yelled at me when he wanted me to leave him alone. The same eyes that cried heavy tears into my shoulder when she left.

It doesn't matter if they're the same. Either way, they love(d) me.

My therapist used to ask why I always smiled when I talked about you, especially when the things I talked about weren't happy at all.

I really don't know, I'd say.

She'd tilt her head and watch me carefully. I'd hold my breath because the words didn't exist yet.

It hurt too much to say them so I could only do the one thing I've always done: smile. Smile because it's okay. Smile because the world is how it should be.

When I walked out of therapy, I didn't smile for the rest of the day. My mouth didn't turn up at the corners for anything.

Only in therapy did I make the effort to show that I was remotely okay.

Now, as I lay in bed, the words become real. In this empty house, something comes into existence.

I miss you.

My mouth doesn't threaten to put on a mask. My lips know better than to try and lie anymore.

I want to be where you are. I want to be with you.

I never said these words because they didn't exist in my mind yet. My mouth, god bless her, wanted to save me from the pain of knowing.

With no one around, no one to witness the words as they come into existence, I begin to panic.

Tears fall from my eyes because I didn't anticipate the pain of seeing. The all-encompassing pain of believing that you are no longer around.

The rain is still falling outside -
it's only been an hour since I woke up and I can still feel traces of you on my body.

You are the blood running between my legs.
You are the tears falling down my face.

I think it's interesting how you can be nothing and everything at once - you're not even in this world anymore and I still feel you everywhere.

Didn't I tell you to stay away from the dark astral planes?
Why didn't you listen?

I don't know where you are now.
You're lost and I don't know how to find you.

It's beginning to rain outside -
I left my window open just in case you wanted to visit me when I fall asleep.

You see, souls are susceptible to flying away when they're sleeping.

It's not a bad thing, per se, but there are those times when we find ourselves in certain astral planes that have never been visited before.

There are peculiar creatures that lurk there - creatures that will look at your soul in curiosity before following it.

We should take precaution of those astral planes. Stay away from them.

Instead, come to my window when the moon has been shielded by heavy clouds.

Come into my room when the rest of the world is asleep and the only sound that can be heard is rainfall.

My soul will be awake, waiting for you.

I think trauma is a strange word.
I was probably twelve or thirteen when I first heard it - oh yeah, it's when you get really hurt, right?

Blood and guts everywhere.

Thank goodness that doctors exist.
They can patch you up and make you whole again.

"Incoming trauma! All hands on deck!"

I think it's a strange word because, supposedly, trauma is what happened to me. But that can't be right, can it?

I imagine myself being rolled into a hospital on a stretcher, doctors and nurses taking me from paramedics.

"Eighteen year old female suffering from internal cardiovascular and neuro injuries. Speech and sight is impaired."

I'm okay. What are you talking about? All I did was love two people.

"Injuries are consistent with loving parents that don't love you in return."

Wait, what? No, my parents love me!

My dad likes to drink sometimes but at least he doesn't act unpredictable anymore when I suggest he go to bed.

Well, there was that one time he fell down the stairs. Also the time he peed on me while I was sleeping because he believed my room was the bathroom.

But my mom is okay! She likes to leave a lot and there were those times she had loud *** with strangers in the room next to mine late at night. But she's good, I swear. Even when she had chlamydia and I held her while she cried.

Even when she left and never came back.

"I need a crash cart in here! Patient is bleeding out and her blood pressure is dropping - "

I'm fine, I swear.
All I did was love them.

Wait, hang on!
What about that time my parents argued and my dad tried to choke my mom to death?
I mean...I did run away from the house, crying, to find our neighbor.
I did beg her to call the police.

But that's not trauma, right?
I just wanted them to stop yelling. I just wanted him to let her go before she stopped breathing.

That's love.

"Paddles, please! Charge to three hundred..."
"Clear!"

These doctors really don't know anything.

How do you know it's over?
How do you know the pain is gone?

When seconds blur into minutes and minutes blur into hours
and hours turn into days
and days burn away until it's years later...

How do you know?

I'm inclined to believe it never ends -
simply because it's the same as when I go to sleep
and when I wake up in the morning.

That is, if I wake up at all.

I say this because I know the moon rises and the sun sets -
everyone knows this.

I also know there was a time when the sound of your breathing
helped me fall asleep and the feel of your cold feet on mine helped
me wake up.

These things were true. But the moon also goes away and the sun comes up eventually.
You're not here and pain is what has been left behind.

So, I'll ask again.
How do I know it's over?
How do I know when this pain is gone?

It's been three years since you left,
three years of not hearing you in the kitchen on Sunday mornings,
three years of not seeing you sitting on a bed while you fold clothes,
three years of blowing out candles on a birthday cake without you around.

You left.
I can't make it any simpler than that.

It's been three years since I left, too.
You took something with you - a part of me that I didn't realize I had.
Three years of laying in bed and staring at a wall,
three years of going to therapy and speaking to a woman who can't be you.

You left.
It can't be more complicated than that.

Three years is a long time, did you know?
It's a long time without you,
I still wake up in the morning and think you're here.

Maybe it's because you left in the middle of the night, right before I fell asleep. You left in the most painful way - speaking in my ear, holding me.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Gigi.

You kept gripping my arm while you cried. It hurt and I'm not speaking about my arm.
Something within - that part of me you took.

You ripped it from me and took it with you into the night,
I want it back, please. That part of me was the
Me that loved you.

It was the better part of me,
the Me that wanted to breathe.

I don't want to breathe anymore.

A perfect Mommy, a perfect Daddy
A perfect daughter, a perfect life,
A perfect world to exist in, eclipsed by consummate sight.

She was my sun, a seraphic voice  
bathing me in warm light,
And he was my moon, watchful eyes
protecting me from the darkness of night.

Two halves of my whole heart, their blood flowing through
my spirited veins.
Two halves of my whole mind, their thoughts crashing through  
my synthetic brain.  

Perfection is their sweetest lie, proclaimed by selfish mouths uttering
vain whispers after bedtime.  
"I can't live without you. You can't leave me. I know we can survive this."
But survival is intangible against an affliction of the soul.  
  
Imperfection is my harshest truth, comprehended by grieving eyes seeing raw memories before sleep.  
"I can't live without you. You can't leave me. I know you can survive this."
But even a human's profound devotion can be turned away by their Creator,  
just as a pleading child can be deserted by their mother and father.  

And that is the largest betrayal of them all.  

But to remain, to endure against hate's control, against fate, would be an immediate death.  
To try and withstand their sickness and deterioration would be suicide.  

And I have realized that I do not want to die.  

Loss is my most unbearable pain, undeniably clouded by her beautiful smile and his comforting resemblance.

She used to sing her child to sleep, and now, she is singing to her one last time. At the door, he is watching and keeping them both safe.  

They will both leave and never come back, but the memories will remain. The happiness will always be there for recollection.

But for now, it is time to sleep and forget.

She caresses her child's hair and kisses her forehead lovingly, getting up and walking to join him at the doorway.  

The silhouettes of their mournful faces seem like a cryptic dream.  

"Goodnight, Gigi. We love you very much."
"Mom? Dad?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"I can live without you. You can leave me. I know I can survive this."
*"We know."