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“If you think for a second that I don’t have all the time in the world for you, then you’ve got me all wrong.”
“I’m t-trying to fly, but…” “I’ll be your wings,” he says, smoothing back my hair, his chin pressed to the top of my head. “You don’t have to save yourself this time. You’re not alone anymore.”
“Was it…good?” I murmur, my voice horribly frayed and torn. I don’t need to explain. He already knows. “Yes,” he whispers. “I was with you.” Tears glitter in his eyes as he steps away from me and starts to fade into the black of night. “That made it…a good last day.”
WHY OH WHY OH WHY!!!! MAKE IT STOP 😭
People love to say that time heals all wounds. They’re wrong. Time is nothing but a fingernail picking at the scabs, reopening those wounds the moment they start to itch, so they never truly heal. They just bleed out every now and then. Get infected. Cause deeper scars with every scratch and poke. Time doesn’t heal anything. It’s a pretty lie to help us cope. Time just makes it worse.
“I love you. But not with my whole heart, because my heart is no longer whole. I love you with the chewed-up, tattered pieces of it. The shredded remains that have somehow kept me alive for this long. And you don’t deserve that, Gabe. You don’t deserve to be loved with scraps, with the bloody leftovers. That’s not fair.”
“Give me the sun and the moon.” I press a kiss to her hairline. “Hand me the sea.” A kiss to her forehead, to her tear-streaked cheek. “Steal every star from the fucking sky…and I still have nothing.” Another kiss to her nose, to the perfect bow of her lips. She’s still shaking her head like she doesn’t believe me, but I need her to believe me. I place a final kiss to her mouth before inching back and whispering, “You’re my everything, Tabs. Without you, I have nothing.”
“I’ll never expect you to love him less, okay?”
“I’ll never ask you to choose. I’ll never tell you to let him go.” I cup her cheek, hoping she feels my truth, because it is the truth. “Love’s not a competition, and it’s not always singular. I don’t care what the books say, or what society tells us. Don’t ever feel guilty for sharing your heart. You said it like it was a bad thing, but it’s not, baby. It’s not. It’s a beautiful thing.”
And I suppose it’s as they say: what goes up must come down. But it’s a shame they don't tell you about the crash. They don't mention how hard you'll hit, or how much it will hurt. There’s no talk of the bones cracking, the lungs wheezing, the heart bleeding and bruised.
I suppose that as long as he haunts me, it means he’s still here. And I’ll take any part of him I can get. Even his ghost.
</3 thought of Justin Bieber’s lyrics “but if I can’t be close to you, I’ll settle for the ghost of you.”
“To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.”
😢
