romeo,

you’re gone.

not from this world, no. you didn’t end up taking your life, lying next to what you believed was my lifeless body, only for me to gain consciousness too late, realizing the horrors of what you’ve done with no other choice but to follow through. it was quite an unexpected contrast to this ill-fated romance’s historically known ending.
if anything, we did end up together. somehow, we made it work, swearing on pinky promises that we always would on the roof under skies plagued with stars. with a few snaps of our fingers, we made fate bend to our own will. we believed we ruled fate’s coastlines as we ransacked abandoned buildings spray-painting quotes from our favorite books and lines from the songs we listened and danced mindlessly to on nights we’d chase down bottles with kisses frantic, laughing maniacally, imagining the apocalypse, us two being the last of earth’s inhabitants. as we shared candy corn roaming the carnival grounds, atop the ferris wheel right in time for the sunset’s tail, hands laced with the cheap rings from the marriage booth where we exchanged our hypothetical vows. as we scoured thrift shop racks eager to dress up for the halloween parties our friends threw, seeking the silence of the dim upstairs hallways and bedrooms, making out, costumes half undone while downstairs the crowd got trashed. as we picked items from the aisle on an unplanned grocery run, another batch of your burned meal that i’d roll my eyes at which you’d laugh, volunteering to order take outs in surrender. as we strolled the streets by the lunar tides, enveloped by silence, the comforting kind, the one that talked of what’s lost with the last of our heartbeats.
we were able to get past tragedy embedded in veins of young star-crossed lovers, an inescapable curse. we broke the curse all those times we laid on forest floors drizzled with the dead bodies of stars turning this supposedly sad tale the right side up. we were renegades rejoicing in the mayhem they caused all the nights they sneaked out-even though it wasn’t needed. we didn’t have to be in hiding-our families were surprisingly okay with us together.
our middle fingers were saluted to fate’s face-at least that’s how it felt. we thought we were on top of the world, atop that hill, the city twinkling below us like fairy lights in your bedroom. all our worries below, far behind. funny how all along fate was the one laughing, sneering at our faces. fate never sided with us, it was just waiting for the right moment to show what’s it got up its sleeves, to strike with excruciating tragedy.
and i guess here it is, the tragedy. just not how it’s depicted in history books but nevertheless it occurred like the breath i didn’t know i was holding. maybe in this life fate tried to be kind, but not quite, giving us a softer kind of heartbreak, melodramatic still, just one with no deaths. perhaps it got tired of eavesdropping all the times we used to talk about heaven and hell and dying and how we passed them off like the mere places we got our scars from. we weren’t ever scared of it, a complete opposite of how we were scared of losing the other. or i guess how i was.

i can’t quite comprehend how i faced that fear for you, how i let you go after we sat in your secondhand toyota like how we normally did because it was our safe place to talk. though that the conversation ran sans our usual order of french press and cappuccino and it ran without pleasantries. we talked about us and how you couldn’t see ‘us’ in the future anymore. i don’t know where we started to fall apart neither the how’s or the why’s. i don’t know how i managed to abide by your wish, your selfish plea. all i knew was that if letting you go was what’s going to make you happy then i wasn’t going to stand in the way of your happiness.
so yes, you’re gone but not dead, neither of us is dead. you’re just off to a place miles away from here, from me. you didn’t say where you’re headed but i saw the plane ticket on the nightstand the night before you left.
maybe love’s one huge tragedy once exhausted out. it’s been days and my mind’s in circles more than ever, digging inescapable trenches of this train wreck you’ve forged out of me. and i’m not sure, if this is me or the bitterness speaking, but i think i would’ve preferred our supposed ending. dying side by side.

but don’t mind that, i truly wish you well. i hope you find whatever it is when your feet touch the ground be it a reason to live or some girl named rosaline.

still yours,
juliet