the old me had dreams. daydreams. worlds lived inside my head, worlds that i could escape into when it all became too much.

but it was like the instant we met, the world narrowed down until it only included you, and then it was you, and suddenly you were simultaneously the only thing i wanted to escape from and the only place i could escape to, and the only place that felt some semblance of safe was that limbo in between — where logic met desire in a confused torsion of worlds, where the oceans were the land but the oceans were still the oceans too, and the only option was to tread water until my strength ran out and i drowned in you. because you were the land, and the sea, and the sky, and the moon and the sun and the stars — you were all of it. all of the beautiful things that made life worth living and all of the things that made living unbearable.

and so i lived for you, and i died for you, all in the same breath, the same heartbeat, and i still exist like that,

alive but dying.