de l'encre au bout des doigts

You look back at the days, the ghosts lost in the past. At the stranger you were whose shadows stay further behind as you continue your journey forward. Today you are joy, and the person you used to be is an alien of whom you can only contemplate the yet unwalked path. She will get there, she will shed the weight she carries and she be will become.

Today, as you grieve the things that weren’t, the loss and the memories of what will never be, you are also thankful. There is a second somewhere, a heartbeat, in an alternate dream time stands still and you have everything, you don’t need to choose. Engraved in your sorrow there is a choice, one that you make over and over, one that could never be altered, the one choice that you made in less time than a butterfly’s shudder, and as you made it you knew, the consequences, the risk, to gain love you would lose another, to mend your heart you had to rip the other half out and you hoped, even in the most clairvoyant second of your life, you clung to the impossible… you knew that because of someone who then breathed on the other side of the planet, you would lose the person in front of you.

They call it a choice, as if your path could have been any different. They said you could have gone on and build a different life, have fun babe, and for a while that’s where you were headed, to live an existence diminished, haunted by loneliness and grey, your heart perhaps preserved but your soul crushed by an irremediable loss. There was an alternate possibility which almost was, of life filled with friends but lived in loss.

You hoped anyways, because that’s what humans do, in the darkest hours we will always look for the smallest sliver of light, even when we are told of what can’t be, still we will keep vigil and call for miracles. And so you tried to speak a language that wasn’t yours, you ventured out of your shell to compromise on a friendship and a love, to try to honour a past that had shaped you while spreading your wings towards a future that would fulfil who you could become. Your present resembled a race that you knew you had lost but refused to acknowledge, out of time, out of breath, your existence stretched as your phone became the final battle ground that one day brutally led to silence.

All the doors closed, your name erased, a diamond on one hand and nothing in the other. The epilogue of this final chapter, the tears on the pages of this book, the tainted memories, the joy now turned to hurt, were not your doing, even as you were told that they were. You had enough love to hold both universes in your heart. The one person that had once told you that you were enough decided that you weren’t, in the end. Worthy of time, energy, understanding, love, support. Could you help that your eyes acted as a mirror, was it your fault that they felt judged by what they saw of themselves in you?

You know. How much you loved, how little you judged, how difficult it was, how exhausted you were, how much to tried – how much you tried to reconcile all the worlds – how people decided for you what you were thinking and what your words meant. You know that maybe you were one day on the other side for others, and of this you are sorry. The days, the weeks, the months build-up to that second, up the hill in a kitchen, you don’t remember the time, the clothes, the light, you only see the look in their face, the door closing in their eyes, the silent rebuttal following these three cutting words “I’ve said my piece”. The judgement had been passed and you were guilty. The conversation would wane, the doors would close, the bridges would be destroyed, slowly, irremediably and you would stand a witness in an iced desert.

Yes you look back on the days and you are sorry for things that could never be, for what wouldn’t be given – somewhere there is a second, a heartbeat, in an alternate dream time stands still and you make the same choice, over and over, because it was the only path, for you to be whole, for the growth that’s been yours; you regret the unsaid, you cry the rage, you breathe in the joy and you find peace. Because, in that second, in that choice, on the journey that you have and will walk, you are loved, you are enough, you are worthy, and you are saved.