A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope

by K.M. Moronova

We are all ruined in some way, bruised and scarred. But those are the parts I love the most in others, so I want her to see mine too. Love isn’t conditional. The broken pieces of us should be where we

start, not what we inevitably dig up after years of peeling back layers, only to be tired and skeptical.

because without darkness there is no light.”

Why do the loveliest of souls get stomped on?

How can it be that you come to know someone more than you know yourself? I would know her in any life, this I am certain. I don’t believe in such things, but should reincarnation be real… I’m beginning to think Ophelia is my eternity. We would find each other in every life or death, even as phantoms. We would know, just as I do now. Our souls call and beckon, waiting for the inevitable joining of us.

“We are the light.”

“Your light is contagious. Bright. I could find you in the depths of the underworld. Through mist and darkness. Through it all.”

“I would wait for you if it meant walking the cold castle walls of a cathedral until I lost my own identity. Until all I knew was you.”

“I’ll love you until the stars die. I’d follow you into the darkest night,”