Your name is Delphine Cormier, and life is pretty good.
You get amazing grades. You have two parents who love you and each other. You live in a nice house. You have amazing friends, and yet….
And yet.
Something is missing.
You feel it when you go out on the back deck and stare at the river. You feel it when your house echoes its emptiness back at you. You feel it, at night, when you're in your bed and you're comfortable but it isn't enough.
You feel it when you dream of her.
She says your name and she strokes your hair and holds your hand.
You wake up.
How can you ever go on in the waking world when she waits for you in your dreams?
—
You wake up each morning with the ghost of her fingers in your hair. You go to your morning classes but you can't hear the professors over the echo of her voice saying your name over and over and over and-
You sit outside and try to breath but you're drowning in the memory of her kiss.
You do not know who she is or how you came to know her. You do not know her name or where she lives or why you dream of her every night.
All you know is you love her. You love her, you loved her, you will always love her.
—
The moment you finally see her in your waking hours feels impossibly real.
You are sitting on one of the campus' many hills, reading a book when something compels you to look up. When you do your breath freezes in your throat and every thought you've ever had is gone and replaced by her.
You imagine the look on your face mirrors hers. She is wide-eyed. She looks like everything in her life has been leading up to this moment and maybe it has because you've never felt more alive than when you're looking at her.
She takes the few steps that separate you and smiles.
"I'm Cosima," she says. "Weird question, but um… have I seen you somewhere before?"
You laugh, but it sounds clogged. How strange this all is. "Delphine," is all you say. You hold out your hand.
She takes it in hers; warm, calloused. Rough but comforting and she holds yours tightly and you really hope you're not dreaming again-
"Not to sound cheesy," she says, "but have I seen you in my dreams?"
—
She is perfect.
Not in the way a straight line is perfect, but more in the way your coffee tastes when you first make it or the way cigarette smoke looks in the early morning light.
You get hung up on the way she talks; the way she waves her arms like the words are coming from her fingers rather than her mouth. The way her lips curve when she says your name. The way she grins when you say hers and her tongue presses against the back of her teeth.
She's not perfect in the way a library organized by color would be, but rather in the way an old worn book still smells fresh as you turn its weather-beaten pages.
—
"I've been reading up on like, past lives and stuff," she says to you one day as you lay beneath a tree on campus. You are stretched out with your head in her lap and her fingers comb through your hair and you're alive oh god you're so alive.
"Mm?" you murmur, and she laughs and it's like late night rain.
"Are you falling asleep on me?" She stops petting your hair and you grumble in protest.
"So demanding," she sighs, but then her fingers are back and you couldn't care if she was reading you the yellow pages, it'd still be more beautiful than anything you've ever heard in this life or any past ones.
"A lot of people claim to dream of past lives. Like, they remember people they knew or places they've been or whatever," she tells you, and you try hard to remember your dreams. What she was wearing. What her hair was like (though you find it hard to imagine her without the dreadlocks.) You find you can't recall.
You know why. It's because you no longer wish for her.
She is already here.
—
"Do you believe in soul mates?" she whispers to you as you lay in bed. You play with her fingers, stretching each one out individually and studying them like they hold the secrets to the universe within them.
"I think I must," you reply, "because I saw you in my dreams and now you are here. If I loved you then and I love you now, our souls must be made for one another."
The kiss she bestows upon you is wet with tears.
—
She always gets out of bed first; a class to TA, hours to put in at the lab. She never leaves the bed without kissing you a thousand times, though.
You curl up on your side and listen to her humming in the shower. You watch her body curve as she dresses, smile at the face she makes when she puts her glasses on, all scrunchy and squinty-eyed.
She puts on her jacket and whispers "See you later."
You watch her go like you watch the sun set.
—
You do not know why the universe chooses for two souls to become one. You don't know why her. Why the universe chose to put the two of you together forever but you don't care why as long as she's yours.
You love her.
You loved her then, you love her now. You were the first to love her and you will be the last.
—
She gets sick in the winter months. She coughs and coughs like she's got something to prove. You watch her suffer and beg her to see a doctor but she won't.
You can see in her eyes that she knows her fate, so you take her in your arms. In the middle of your big empty house you hold her and the two of you sway in rhythm.
—
You dream of blood. Hers, all down your shirt and in your hair. You dream of watching her fall into nothingness, watch her die over and over and over and over and over-
"Delphine," she whispers, and you are dragged back to consciousness as a drowning man is dragged to the surface.
She is your savior.
You can't save her.
—
She fades like the changing seasons.
The leaves begin to turn. She begins to weaken.
The air begins to cool. She begins to cough up crimson.
She leaves you one morning after you've spent the night kissing her.
You watch her go like you watch the sun set.
—
You wake up each morning with the ghost of her fingers in your hair. You go to your morning classes but you can't hear the professors over the echo of her voice saying your name over and over and over and-
You sit outside and try to breath but you're drowning in the memory of her kiss.
You don't know why the universe chose to make you soul mates if it was just going to rip her away from you, time after time after time.
You don't know why you were given this perpetual fate of loving and losing her.
You don't know.
What you do know is you'll go through it, time after time after goddamn time if it means seeing her smile and feeling her kisses and hearing her voice when it says your name in the early morning light.
You will see her again.
In the meantime, you sleep.