"They asked if I wanted to go for you." I grunt, the city streets alive even in this gruelling night. Cold nips at my hands, and I wrap one within the other, twisting and grazing, bringing warmth back into the bumpy skin. "I hate that phrase. It makes it sounds like some kind of journey, like you're some kind of destination, and I must reach you at all costs, regardless of my choice, regardless of your denial, regardless of everything." It must be the coffee. Where I've left my half-finished café mocha, I remain unsure. But I am not the type to act like this; to rage, rant, rowdily ruminate over things of the past.

                     I inhale sharply once I realize that this is a lie.

                 "Hey," he whispers, hands slithering towards mine, gripping tightly. They're colder, larger—there's more of him for me to bleed into. When wasn't there? "That's in the past. You don't even speak to them anymore. Why are you thinking about this? Did—?"

                     "You are not a place I need to reach." I bark; loudly, noisily, unashamedly. He is not where my story ends. We are not the last stop on this loop of life.

                         Courage seeps from me, and I turn to him, his eyes almost fading into the semi-darkness around us. Streetlights shine a distance away, on either side; his face remains stark. Dark. As if he's scaled a mountaintop, the mountaintop, only to discover that his dream waited in the clouds surging above another mountain. As if he's realized that I am not where he wants to be.

                  A sigh leaves him. From the way it lands on my shoulders, I almost assume that he is on the path to reciprocating this action on me.

                        "You are your own." He whispers. A crack, a fissure, distinguishable in the smooth, tranquil tone to his voice, slithers into my earlobe. The breaking point engraves itself into the back of my mind, a replica of that flaw, that gruesome scratch on a sterling silver platter, carved into my skull—above the bed I had made for him when he had sentenced me to a death that reoccurred every morning. Everything came to an end within me—a thousand suns, setting behind my ribcage. "I am not your saviour. But I am someone who loves you, okay? That—I still can't go over that without turning my hands into fists. I can't remember what I did, and did, and did, without self-hatred rearing its head. I hate that you thought I was someone you had to reach. I didn't then, but I do now." A colossal pause interweaves with my breath, the horrid, shallow expulsions my body pursues with vigour and anguish. He is saying the words I once needed to hear. He is giving way to the man that I had built beside that bed; the one who would resurrect me. "But I am not that person anymore. And you, you—" Another lifetime of waiting. My throat begins to desiccate as a burning sensation swarms over my eyes, my hands begin to quiver the moment his still. "You are not the same. You are so much more. You were too much for me. A fire blazing through a snowstorm. A tsunami in the desert. You were impossible for me to reach, even with your hand close to mine. Who am I kidding? Of course you would get burned, be snuffed out, have your waters taken from you. All I did was take. All you did was give."

               The truth flickers between us, until it bursts in glorious light.

               "I'm sorry." It leaves him like a weight off of his shoulders. The crack deepens, widens, extends, and mere seconds have past, but I find his head in my lap, his body quaking within mine, shaky hands clutching onto shakier ones, open lips comforting those that have split. "I'm so fucking sorry."

                   The moment makes me wonder if there was something, then, that I had not heard—had not paid attention to, had disregarded and written off. I wonder if he tried to expel these words in monkeys who refuse to see, or blushing faces with their eyes shut.

             My hands run through his hair, as soft as the tears that land on my leg, and I hear it. Between lines of it's not who I am and I don't see you that way, there lies an apology that transcends time.

                     Maybe, if he'd heard mine—in the I need you to be honest and a thank you—he would not be weeping into me, and I would not be building into him.

☀

Another glimpse of the future.

Thank you for reading, and for being here. I love you.

  —jay.