Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you,” he whispered, hoarse, tortured. My throat ached. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

begged my mouth to finish the question, to stay awake long enough to hear this new answer, but I was slipping, slipping, slipping, and there, in a grave colder than Mars, next to the soul I’d loved for a hundred lives and lost in every one, we took our final breath beneath the indifferent stars.

as I gazed upon the first bramble, I thought of how the world reinvents itself year after year, century after century, summer deepening always into autumn, winter brightening always into spring, growing new flowers from old roots, and I thought of how it feels to hold you, each season of you, our love blossoming afresh, year after year, century after century, new flowers from old roots, an eternal seed from which life will always bloom

Almost everyone I had ever loved was dead, and the hurt never went away; I just learned to exist alongside it.

And so, in the absence of any abiding religious convictions, this was the one blind faith I had: that love was a physical force, and it was never wasted. Once it was called out into the universe, it would echo back to us forever.

“You have faith in all of humanity. You have faith in love. Please, have faith in me. I do this to protect you. Do you understand that? That I would lay my body over yours, war after war after war, life after life after life?”