“So go. Be great. Be happy and fulfilled. But know this, Ash’Arah—if you leave, you leave a stain. I have scoured and I have scrubbed until I have little feeling left, yet thoughts of you remain. Since the day you arrived, you have not left my thoughts, and I cannot seem to distance my soul from yours. I have accepted it, and I see it not as a loss, but as an answer to the question I didn’t realize I was seeking.
