Where We Ended

by Ashley Munoz

For those who stare at the darkness fully aware it’s staring back. Keep looking. Become the monster you always feared, the one who once controlled you. Step out of that inky mass as a new creature with teeth and nails and an appetite for fear.

“Because you have me, I’ll be your hope. I’ll be your sun, your moon and anything else good in this world. Give me your dark and I’ll hand you all my light.”

He was a dark forest, obstructing all the light. And I was parched earth in need of his shade. We were impossible, and the idea that we could ever be anything more than two passing ships in the night was laughable.

“You’re the closest I’ll ever get to heaven, to redemption or being found worthy. I look at you, and I see hope. Isn’t that all heaven is? Hope, eternity spent in the one place we can’t imagine living without? You’re that for me. You’re my religion, Natty. My place of worship and devotion. God wants nothing to do with me, but for some reason he still gave me you.”

“Forever, Caelum. I’ll want you for that long, and then longer when the devil demands my soul.” She kissed my chest. “He can’t have what belongs to me.”

“Anything happens to you, Caelum, and my brain won’t matter. Nor my heart, or anything else that allows me to breathe. It’s you or it’s nothing, my love.”

“Where else would I go, Caelum? You’re my home, my heart…my entire fucking soul.”

Our kiss was like those stories I grew up reading, a memory pressed into pages with ink, old and tattered, nearly forgotten.

My hope had grown long, tattered wings like something from the deep. A dark place made up of broken dreams and loneliness.

I’m nothing but darkness, and I’ll continue to steal your light for as long as you have air in your lungs and you carry my heart within your chest.”

“We don’t end, Caelum. We just keep going, we’re like the roots that hold the crust of this fucking earth together. Bound to one another.”

Your soul is my favorite thing about you.

She was safe. She was happy, and she was free. I knew deep down I loved her enough to let her stay that way.

“I’d die a thousand times over if it meant I could keep you safe. My life is not worth living without you in it, Caelum. You’ve been my forever since my life started. If you were to end, then I would too. The fact that you didn’t realize that…it kills me.”

Loving you has been the greatest joy of my life, and if it meant that I lost a few pieces of myself along the way then it was worth it.

our love was made of the very same substance that makes the stars stay in the sky, and the currents that spread throughout the rivers. We’re an ocean wave: violent, turbulent and steadfast. No time apart would ever diminish that.”

So the darkness fell in love with the sun, and for as long as the two held each other, sharing the sky, the land was prosperous.”