The Fall

by Tal Bauer

It’s a question I’m asking all the time because the version of me that I believed in, the me I thought I would become, has never materialized. He has never existed, and the man I am today is only an echo of my broken dreams.

How do you fix yourself when you don’t know what’s broken? How do you find your way when you’re so lost you don’t know which way is north?

I’m not suicidal, but I’m desperate, and the difference is razor-thin.

I want it to stop. I want to hold on to the silence of a world where I’m the only thing in it. And I’m so tired of being alone.

I want. I crave. How can I want something I can’t remember ever having?

I lean in, closing the distance. Our lips meet. It’s not Blair’s first kiss, but it is mine, and it’s perfect. It’s fireworks and lazy mornings and gentle midnights, promises and declarations and silent, secret glances, all at once. It’s a tidal wave, pulling me under, and I’m not even close to fighting it. I’ve dreamed of this moment, but reality is so much better.

“Sometimes I look at you,” he says, his voice low, “and I forget how quiet my life was before.”

“Every time,” he breathes. “Every single time, you rock my entire world.” God, there is no part of me that isn’t his.

It scares me how deep this love runs when I have no memory of how we got here. Every atom of me is oriented toward him. He is my North Star.

You could have all of me, forever. You do have all of me forever.

You are the part of me I never knew was lost, my missing piece I never knew I needed.

Deepest wants. A sob rises in me. I was in love. I had everything. Blair looked at me like I was the only star in his sky. And none of it was real.

Here I am in the dark, clutching him through the static of my phone screen. Blair in pixels, me in fragments.

Everything’s falling apart, and all I have left are these sketches of a man who doesn’t know me, who I love more than the sun loves the sky.

How do you mourn someone who’s standing right in front of you? How do you let go of a love that was only ever yours?

“And if you want something breathtaking, you’d better be willing to burn for it.”

Inside me, the world has ended, but these little lights keep casting their glow. I’m not alive. I’m not breathing. I’m not anything. I’m not anything except his, and I belong to him, and I belong to him, and I always have, and I always will, and⁠—

“I don’t know how not to fall for you.” His confession sinks past bone and into the very center of me. “Fall,” I choke out. “I’ll catch you.”

If love alone fixed people, none of us would break at all.

If time is circling, let me stay inside the spiral. Let this moment loop and fold over itself, soft as breath. Let me drift in the blue-lit hush with Blair’s lips dropping soft kisses on my skin.

I loved him once without knowing why. I love him now knowing everything. I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

What happened is the map that led us here, to each other and to the rest of our lives. Some might call it fate. Others might say coincidence. I call it ours.