𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐄𝐯𝐞,

As I try to recall the last time I held you, or felt the softness of your skin, or touched your lips to mine; it’s like a distant dream I can barely remember.

One that I cannot be sure was ever real.

My soul aches for you, and the stories my mind replays are my only proof that we ever once were. Oh, to imagine tracing my lips so delicately across the small of your neck. To feel the silk of your hair graze my cheek is to indulge heaven, once again.

How I wish we could return to Eden. To a time we were together always. In beauty, in safety, in love. How it pains me to know that we could still be there now if not for - well, you know…

How arrogant we had been to ignore the rules set for us. To renounce our loyalty and virtue. To fall for illusion over truth. For momentary pleasure over God’s eternal favour.

My love, my heart and my soul is you. It will forever be you. Each woman I meet whilst in wait of you is nothing more than a shadow. A faded reflection. A hollow imitation of your divine essence.

How hard it is to contain my anger at being parted from you. How hard I work to cultivate patience, understanding and forgiveness in each lifetime before finding you again. How hard it is not to hate God for this cruel fate that we live out, over and over.

I know we broke our covenant with Him by allowing sentient flesh to pass our lips. And yet, how this one momentary curiosity could lead to such separation, such destruction, is still hard to comprehend. Even now. Even after all of these centuries.

The first time you died in my arms, I broke in ways that were impossible to have fathomed. The pain I experienced was unlike any that man should be capable of feeling, and survive. And yet, this was only the beginning.

Had I known the extent to which this pain would deepen across these lifetimes, I am not certain that I would have chosen to continue living this life. Being without you, without your smile, your vibrance and laughter. Existing as but one half of a soul is excruciating.

After your first death, the pain was relentless. Your memory both haunted and tortured me. And yet - it also kept me alive. Surviving. I needed it with me. To not have it with me in this world would have been a far, far crueler fate.

When I finally succumbed to death, alone, without you, it felt welcomed. There was a certain sweetness to knowing that this lifetime was finally over and that soon I would be born again into a world with you in it.

Fated always to love you, to find you and of course - to lose you all over again.

Do you remember Atlantis? The temple by the sea? The sacred place where we whispered our vows together, and joined once again? How the waves crashed against the virgin white stone as we held each other tightly and prayed for that lifetime to last forever.

But of course, it could not. Then it became my turn to leave you first. I knew the pain you were to face in my absence and how I wished to be able to take it from you, to save you from it. That was another kind of pain. A deeper kind of pain, knowing how you would ache without me.

It felt like a millennia before our next meeting. And for the first time, I felt the fear that we may never find each other again. I was already 30 before I found you in Egypt, alone in the temple gardens.

Do you remember the perfume of the lotus flowers? That sweet scent will forever remain imprinted on me, as will the joy imprinted on my heart in the moment your eyes locked with mine.

Your eyes. Your beautiful hazel eyes. Eyes that I would know on any face, in any body, in every lifetime.

But the Pharoah had claimed you as his own. And I was to feel the deepest pain of them all, as I endured your betrothal to another man. To know that his body was violating yours, ours. To feel him weaken our sacred bond every time he lay with you. That lifetime was agonising.

The only reprieve I felt was in your telling me he treated you with kindness. But I could still see the depth of pain in your eyes. I felt your pain every day in my heart and carried it with my own for four long decades before the bittersweet kiss of death arrived to release me.

And then came Rome.

Do you remember the warmth of the sun on our skin as we lay together in your father’s vineyards whispering poetry to the Gods? Do you remember the naivety of my promises? Promises made with such recklessness. Promises to never leave you, or our unborn daughter, as I swore that no Empire nor Caesar could ever part us.

But of course they did. Rome ripped me from you and her before she had even turned four. She was our most beautiful creation. Her innocence and sweetness took me back to our life together in Eden, and for the first time since our exile, I felt the full weight of our separation from it.

What perfection, what ecstasy we had lived in. Without fear or burden, or shame. Without clothing to further separate us from nature, from God. If only we had appreciated it truly. If only it hadn’t taken this agony to realise what we once had.

My heart shattered to depths I never knew possible the day they took me from you both. I thought we had already experienced every possible physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain imaginable. Yet that day proved me wrong, again.

You cried so hard you could barely breathe. You begged and pleaded with me to run away, just the three of us. But how could we have, my love. Where was left to go that Rome had not yet conquered? The agony of that day still echoes in my heart, even now, even here.

I had never known such helplessness, nor anger, for this system of violence and war separating us. The evil in government was just too powerful, and I was just one mortal man. What could I have done? To run was to risk your lives, and those of our parents. How could we have dared? We had no option but to submit.

We both knew that I wasn’t coming back. We never said it aloud. We never dared to sound the words. But we knew. And so, for the first time in our existence, we lied to each other. I promised you I would be back soon, and you forced a smile as you kissed my cheek and whispered goodbye.

You asked me to bring you myrtle on my return. How poetically you asked for the flowers sacred to Venus. Even in the most painful of times, you always knew how to assert the sweet into the bitter. To return divinity to our mortal sufferings.

Back then, at least.

I felt your cries of anguish just as vividly as you felt the sword plunge into my body. As I lay dying on that battlefield, a thousand miles from you, I felt every pounding, raging beat of your heart as you cursed God and spoke words that I never knew could form of your sacred lips.

Words that you lived a long life to regret as you watched our daughter grow with their poison deep in her heart. She was never to feel God’s love or greatness. She never lived to experience true love like ours, like His.

I tried to communicate with you, I sent many signs - but your anger, and hers, closed down the connection. And your suffering became unbearable. I watched from the other side, as your youth and your beauty left you. Your bitterness was a constant poison flowing through your veins, calcifying your heart. And in the end, part of my soul died alongside yours.

And then came even darker years.

How blessed and how cursed we had been in equal measure. We had been reunited in childhood, born to the same village on the outskirts of Paris. We were the best of friends. The poverty and the filth mattered not to us as we were together.

Only, the outside world was not to be kept at bay for long, was it?

Even the church doors could not keep out death. The priests told us God was punishing humanity, the nobles fled behind stone walls and the streets stank of sickness and rot. We wept at the alter and begged God to save our son, but no mercy came.

No answers. No miracles. No grace.

I no longer knew how to comfort you, or hold you, or speak words of love. Love itself felt like nothing more than a distant memory or fantasy. You fell so deeply into depression and it wasn’t long before the Black Death took you from me, too.

And then it was my turn to harden my heart to God. I couldn’t pray again after that day for I had only curses on my lips and hatred on my tongue. Rage burned from my body to my soul.

I thought I had seen the depths of hell on the Roman battlefields, but oh how wrong I had been. Death carts now lined every street of the city, bodies of babies and children, men and women were stacked like market produce. Animals lay lifeless in the gutters. The air turned putrid and thick with the stench of decay.

I did not die in battle, nor fire, nor by my own trembling hand - in spite of the ever present thoughts to take my own life, since your death. The weight of existence had become unbearable, yet I dared not to act upon those thoughts for fear that it may have kept me from you in our next lifetime.

No matter my suffering, I could not take that risk.

So I continued on, broken and bitter. The anger hollowed me out to a shell, and my body withered and faded from life. Towards the end, I had nothing left of you. Not your voice, nor face. Not even Jacob’s laughter or cry. Memories had dissolved into nothing, drowned in liquor and grief.

I don’t remember the day of my death in that body, in that lifetime. It’s all somewhat hazy to me. All I recall is that as my anger overtook my love, and hatred festered inside of me, I could feel death moving closer. I didn’t just die of a broken heart, or body, but of a broken soul.

And deep down - I knew. I had punished myself and cast away my own salvation as anger severed my connection to God. In the end, I was the one who sealed my own fate.

And so I sit here today, at the Castel San Pietro, watching the Adige river flow, thinking of you. Longing for you. This lifetime has been good to me, I was born to nobility. I sit here well dressed, educated and fed.

Yet this does little to alleviate the ache in my heart as I wait once again.

This time I have the resources to keep us safe. We can live out this lifetime in peace and in beauty. In God’s light once again.

Last night He whispered to me in my dreams. He told me that you are named Juliet. Juliet. Another beautiful name for my beautiful soulmate. Although you will always remain in my heart, my Eve.

As it was, as it is, as it always shall be,

eternally yours, body and soul,

Adam