"I'm tired of proving my worth."
They both thought.
As they slowly faded out of each other's lives.

I didn’t know you. We lived in different worlds and lived different lives. We were strangers. You were just a random beautiful face that I thought I would soon forget not because you are not worthy to be remembered, but because I was not worthy to remember you. You were art. I was just passing by.

You didn’t know me. The things that keep me up at night, the shadows and the clouds that I have lived with. The corrosion and the gunk in the gears of my mind that contaminated my relatively peaceful heart. My underrated, silent suffering.

I don’t know you. I had no plan to, but the universe decided otherwise. Suddenly, you were not random anymore. You were art, and you remembered me.

You don’t know me, but you saved me. You don’t even know it either. How your words and the simple things slowly lifted the smoke from my eyes, making me see the world that I’ve been missing. I never realized I needed saving until you did.

I wanted to know you. I wanted to think you were an angel sent from above, but angels eventually go back to the heavens after they’re done, don’t they? So I wished you were human. As human as I was, in this forsaken, fractured world together.

I still don’t know you. I don’t know what makes you cry at night or what cracks you up in the middle of the day. Your soul is still a mystery to me. I know your favorite color and your favorite food, but these are meaningless things in your bigger and beautiful universe to be explored and understood.

You still don’t know me. I still haven’t got the chance to offer myself to you. Time and circumstance made sure of that. You still don’t know about my dreams and desires. You don’t know about the world inside my head, constantly whirring and exploding in activity.

I know something about you. You are not an angel, you don’t go back above to report an accomplished mission and take on another one. You are human too, wandering this world with your own shadows and clouds. Maybe you also need saving.

I wish I could know you. I want to see the demons lurking under your bed, and the dreams you try so hard to protect. I want to see you weep and know the reason why, to see you smile and laugh and never wonder why.

I faced the universe and the inevitable reality of our fate, since that day you showed your courage.
You had a peculiar way of being brave - to give up was your only way.
I tell myself you needed strength, that what you did was never easy - that giving me up was a form of bravery.