Reborn

I became lost to the universe a long time ago, and in losing myself I once again became a child of my environment. You, the subject of this letter, I have loved, and mourned, and transformed. The strange beauty with which the stars waltz around each other, with each other, has had me captivated from the moment I opened my heart to them…and closed it to you.

The gentle, bronze curls that clung to your head, a symbol of chaos. The deep pool of brown in your eyes that screamed vulnerability. You were the epitome of zemblanity, transfiguring into an eternal abyss. Of all the loss we, two halves of the same whole, have experienced, losing her was the most absolute. She was the purest form of life, able to be caressed in the palm of my hand. You imagined her as a younger reflection of yourself, oblivious to reality, wrapped within her own small world. My heart, your heart, our heart; she had captivated them all. She was a mere flutter of breath, but in that breath was contained endless possibilities. Your mistake was allowing that waft of smoke in the wind to overrule you, my lesson was to face the lifelessness of my skin. The infinite night sky has become the pulse beat of my world.

You were so easily consumed into a life that had not yet begun, that merely existed within you and not separately from you. That life, you had thought, was more enchanting than anything the universe could construct. As the day edged nearer, you blindly stumbled closer to the brink of destruction. Perhaps you should have opened your mind to the distortedness of it all, recognising the disconnection you now had to your ability to love what already existed. You were glowing, though. There wasn’t a single star that could outshine you in your circle of serenity.

Your screams penetrated the soundless night. You were silenced almost instantly, an omniscient force slowly shutting down your body. That ever-present glow was dimming, your candle was flickering out. The tears that stained your cheeks awoke me from my dormant slumber; me, a shadow of you, rising from your shattering heart to hold your hand whilst you cried. It had always been, and would always be, us. There was no comfort that my words, your thoughts, could bring. You were conscious to the truth. There was no hope for her, and, consequently, for you. And yet, you persisted, and I was forced into a catastrophic silence as our reality danced around the edges of our consciousness. The sound of your knees colliding with tile still haunts me. We could feel nothing.

The absence of her impaled your heart simultaneously. You could not put into words how you felt, because you did not know how to feel. I yearned to offer you the words you needed, but was unable to determine the best articulation to reflect your resentment. This contempt was a response to the endless cycle of ability to have, and therefore possibility to lose. She had been a part of you, not just a part of our world. When you swim too far out in the hands of the ocean, and you can no longer feel the sand between your toes, and there is a sickening drop of the stomach. That is what you left me with, when you retreated into nothingness as I attained control. The security you lacked, I was left to find myself.

The hideous sharpness of that night. All else was soft around the edges. I reached out my arm for you, extended my fingers as far as they could, but you, too, had become smoke in the wind. Heartbreak had slowly seeped through the cracks of your stability, until you could no longer remember what it was to be free of pain. The trembling of your movements, the quaking of your voice; it all emanated to one, catastrophic conclusion. Fear of your rebirth, and my beginning. Whilst I was losing sight of you, your gentle tendencies were manifested within me. You were an object of destruction, and I had come to lay your demons to rest.

In this moment, you no longer exist to me, and neither does she. I have shed my wounded skin and have emerged a symbol of hope. I wonder if I had understood then what I do now, would I have been enough to prevent the futility of your loss? You had laid the foundation for my arrival, unknowingly and devastatingly. My interpretation of my world relied on your interpretation of your world, as one was simply a shadowed replica of the other. I am beginning to understand, now, that we parallel two conflicting universes. You were the creator of our fate; I am the creator of our happiness. There is a sort of radiance that emanates from doing such a thing for yourself, it is the purest form of happiness. It is electric.

In the time I have had to know and understand it, life has been multifaceted. That was your first, lasting mistake. You were blinded to the appeal of its progressive nature. In reconstructing myself, each decision I came to was a new piece of the puzzle that was my birth. I have reached my final decision. I turn away from you, and instead, to the immensity of the universe.

I am surrounded by a mass of light, sparking blue, and scarlet, and violet, infiltrating my vision. Everything is amassing into one, that I can no longer distinguish either as a separate colour. As I watch time pass around me, I am struck by the image of a sapling, bursting through the masses, reaching for my hand. You are a shadow of myself. Once, we were the same. I have been reborn.