This story has been two years in the making, and honest to god, it was the most stressful 6000 words ever. But I'm here now, and I really am grateful.

I'm not too sure if I want to continue fanfiction. I still have 90% of the next 'Reading' chapter saved. But I'll think about it.

Try not to read too much into it K?

Thank you for everything, really.

- Mark

PS: A lot of the formatting got screwed by Fanfiction, really sorry.

Clio

Dear friend,

Before we start, there are some things that I would like to clarify.

First off, I am not actually blind.

Yes, I know it literally says in the title blind, but I wouldn't call myself blind just yet.

Anyway, most blind people aren't blind. At least, not in the way you're thinking: of milky irises, long red canes, fingers and limbs grasping at thin air. Very rarely is blindness like that.

I am not blind. I am going blind: glaucoma.

The doctors call it heterogeneous, bilateral, and irreversible. They have even given me a date: 28th August. Five days before my 18th birthday.

When I told my uncle Hades about this and how I am writing to you. He responded with a click of his tongue and a scratch of the cheek. If that's the case, he said, then why are you doing this? Why are you making this memoir when there are many other things that you should do and need to do?

My reply went something like this:

One: I already have a list of things that I want to do thank you very much, and I will eventually get around to doing all of them.

Two: Maybe writing a memoir is something that is on my list. Maybe it's all the way at the top.

Three: This is something that I want to do and I don't need to explain to you why I do not want to do something because that is entirely up to me and none-of-your-business.
Because I want to see the ink in between my fingers and in the corners of my nails — because I do not ever want to forget.

I am currently writing this in the hope that you feel the same, and in any case, I am of the utmost confidence that you do.
And so with that, let us begin.

There is another thing that I forgot to mention …
I do not like autobiographies.

I do not like them. Not because they are unnecessarily long, boring, and poorly written. But because they are necessarily untruthful, because there is always an element of fiction within what is supposed to be non-fiction.

So in a way, I guess this is an autobiography.

But quite unlike an autobiography, I will not bother to start the beginning, because that'll involve a long process through sixteen rather uneventful years. As Holden Caulfield would say: I am not Charles Dickens and this is not David Copperfield.

Instead, I will begin at the start.

It was a blistering October afternoon, the first of many, ushering in the closing of Spring, and the beginning of Summer.

From my desk near the window, I watched as thousands of dust specks floated precariously inside. Like a surfboard on waves, the dust etched into the curves of the sunlight. I exhaled, and the dust promptly exploded into a mass of confetti and fireworks.

In front of me, both Nico and Annabeth sneezed at the same time, interrupting Mr. Brunner from his absolutely riveting discussion on sawdust restaurants and oyster shells.

In the front row, Leo turned around. "You guys okay?"

With my attention returned to the front of the room, the two mumbled something affirmative. And Mr Brunner continued on with his exploration of fragmentation and neurosis.

He talks about disillusionment and alienation, of discontent and psychosis. He talks about Prufrock's struggles with existence and change and time and love. There is all of this and more, but I struggle to fully understand it all.

On this, Mr Brunner suggests to us to not just read the words, but to feel the words on the page. He talks about the texture and tone of the words, the beauty of association. The words are alive — feel them.

I try to do as he says.

Ourania

The city.

I am at a loss as to how one could see the city in a light different to all the thousands of ways it has already been described by those far smarter than I. But nevertheless, I will attempt it.

There is a quiet strangeness in how a city lives and breathes — it is cold and yet warm. The life of the city organism is sustained by its streets, avenues and roads – the veins and arteries and capillaries. Each of these parts are intrinsically different to each other, and yet it is by the whole sum of these parts that a city is truly alive.

Alive
(of people, animals, plants, etc) living; having life.

But on my way to the library, a swarm of people had gathered around the corner crossing, like platelets forming a clot. I moved closer to see for myself.

Next to me, Leo finished off the last of his frozen Coke.

"What do you think happened?"

I make my way to the back of the crowd, spotting the white crumpled side door of a sedan. The two drivers got out of their cars, shared a momentary glance at both each other and the damage. There was a quiet exchange of words and details between them, followed then by the flashes of phone cameras.

The crowd quickly dispersed after that, parting in two uniform lanes around the ruined cars. It was an eerily efficient process. And in the end, only a select few had chosen to linger, if only for an imperceptible glance towards the cars themselves.

Later on, from our well-fought seats in the library overhead, I watched as people faded away, coalescing into indistinguishable blurs. I watched as the bike narrowly avoided the oblivious tourist. I watched as the mother soothed the baby with the sweet mutterings of sleep; the patient waiter as he cleaned up the mess; of people trickling into the streets, merging and separating and recombining.

I took in life as it travelled through the city, ever changing and ever still.

The city was a confusing mass of contrasts and contradictions: chaotic yet ordered. Frantic yet calm. Loud yet silent. Suffocating yet liberating. Its inhabitants are both dead and alive, living in the spaces in between.

Eventually the cars were towed away.

"That was eventful."

"You think? I dunno about you, but I was expecting a lot more shouting. Maybe a few punches added in."

I shake my head. "Is that what it's like living in the suburbs?"

Leo smirks. "You bet fam."

Since the beginning of 8th grade, Leo has been of the opinion that I have the mind of a thirty year old, and the body of a teenager.

He says it is because I think far too much.

Leo was tapping away on his phone, his desk cleared save for a piece of paper.

"Maybe you should stop studying."

"Said no one ever."

"I'm serious. You've been on that same book for the past… three hours." His phone locked with a click. "Besides, don't you need to get home?"

I check my phone. "Ugh —" He was right.

Leo scrunched up his paper into a ball and shot it towards the bin. He turned around with a grin as it landed. "Come on. I'll walk with you to the bus stop."

As we walked outside, the moon was already in full flight, its luminance undeterred by the haze of the night-time metropolis. Its rays slowly drifted into the crooked streetscapes, the grimy restaurants, diffusing into the cold steel frames of the city. Even among the profusion of technology and humans, it was still the moon that shined the brightest. For the moon remains even long after the sun has risen, and remains there long after the setting of the sun – the ethereal companion; the silent comforter.

A loud vibration pierces me out of my musings – I stumble forward.

"Watch it!" I fall, my arms flailing in the air as wind rushes across my face.

"Shit Percy. What the hell are you doing on the road?"

I mutter an apology as Leo helps me up.

"Didn't even see it coming, sorry." There is a strange look on his face.

It is at this time that she arrives.

Calliope

The last section ended rather abruptly; it was ambiguous and ambivalent, abstruse and equivocal… as it was intended to be. I am saying this because I am admitting that I was scared.

Maybe scared is too strong of a term: anxious, nervous, hesitant, and sad. I am now beginning to understand that it is very hard to describe emotions using words.

Words to me seem to be strange and confounding concepts, because we treat them as if they are more than sounds and scribbles. This is something that I thought of while reading the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. In Act 1 Scene 2, Cassius says to Brutus:

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as a fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; Conjure with 'em,
'Brutus' will start a spirit as soon as 'Caesar'.

I find this part to be confusing and strange and sad – because Cassius should be right, but he isn't. Cassius is wrong because everybody remembers the name 'Caesar'; but few remember the name 'Brutus' and even fewer remember the name 'Cassius'. People who are smarter than me call this 'verisimilitude'.

I think it is the very same way with words.

Some words are more meaningful and impactful than others, even though they are just different sounds. These words are the ones who 'demand to be felt'. It is for this reason that I am so often frustrated by words.

Mr Brunner calls this: "The power of words," which is the idea that some words are worth more to us than other words. It is an incredible idea because it implies that things that appear equal are actually not equal. And it is the reason why it is so easy for a person to say "I hate you," yet so hard for them to say "I love you".

Dear friend,
do you think words can break like peo ple?

TUE AT 8:14 PM

Leo: Why did you ignore Hestia like that?

TUE AT 8:58 PM

Leo: I don't want to be nosy. . . It's just that you guys were pretty close, with your families being friends and all. You guys have been friends since you were kids.

TUE AT 9:23 PM

Percy: … Don't worry too much about it. Everything's fine.

That was a lie.

To tell you the truth, I was scared because I could not find the right words. It is because my words matter and because I care that, at that moment, they sank and lodged themselves onto the tip of my tongue and into the bottom of my lungs. It is why I am more comfortable talking to you, because here the words peel away safely onto the white of the page. On paper, the words are relieved of their heavy shackles, the pen flows onto the page as water – but they are dense and fragile, like glass, and far more than I can bear.

And so I ran away from it all. I ran until my heart burned and my legs were numb, but I am afraid that I cannot run away from it any longer.

I slip and fall.

Even now as I look outside, there is a mist lingering in the air. The normally bright streets seems dull and hushed into silence. Plastic wrappers and beer bottles are carried through the streets by the wind – she is cold and harsh and not at all comforting. There is a clash of cymbals and the invasive stench of spent petrol, followed by a gross stream of obscenities.

I cannot bear this cacophony anymore. The colours are slowly flaking away, leaving behind a withered collage of greys and whites.

Euterpe

People in general, I think, dislike change. There is something within us that resists the new, the unknown, the inconsistent. We crave stability and abhor volatility, because there is something terrifying about the thought of waking up and not being the same person you were the night before.

But some people are also of the opinion that it is not the change towards the unknown that scares us, but rather the fear of the change which lasts forever. It is the fear of turning around and never looking back; the silent dissipation of those thin moments of joy and tragedy – the ones that we said were going to last forever.

I remember the carpet stain from the time you spilled orange Fanta; the rust-damaged bike that had once scintillated the brightest aquamarine.

(the street-filled crowds of

hide and seek

where you cried and I laughed).

The bag digs into my shoulders, and the submerging sunlight flickers and weaves in fast-forward.

It is hardwired into my legs:

Up, left, right, straight, the 3rd to the right.

My fingers latch onto the metal handle. It is cold and smooth to the touch; absurd yet oddly comforting.

My legs burn as I push the door forward.

The receptionist smiles the same smile as last time, and tells me to have a seat. But there is something off about it. The jaw clenches, and the incandescence is muted and dull; it is forced, robotic.

I plug my earphones back in, and try to pass the time listening to the haunting voice of TS. Eliot.

"And then the lighting of the lamps."

The light is switched off.

"Now, make sure you keep your eyes open this time."

The clear miscible drops sting my eyes; I try my hardest not to blink as he holds up the ophthalmoscope. The light is numb and watery, and it spreads across the ceilings like thick custard.

"Is there any change from last time?" It was a hopelessly naïve question, to which there was a long hum of consideration.

He replies that a vision field test is needed to double-check, wheeling in a machine that looked like a mix between a microscope and an ATM.

The test was something straight out of a bad video game, click-click-click. The mouse was a perpetual motion of change and volatility. The lines and dots blended together into blotches of light and shadow; my eyes gripped onto those lines and dots with such ferocity that they started to hurt. They leak and bleed, and the ticking metronome devolves into a suffocating symphony of staccato

myheartispounding
its
way

outofmychest

andohmygodIcan'tbreathe.

A hand grips my arm and the world dulls back into nothingness. He says something that I do not understand.

The light is switched back on and I shuffle out of the room, nursing the throbbing beginnings of a headache.

"And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters."

I do not think there is anything more fitting to the clichéd image of the teenager than the act of sleeping. Because whilst it is a cliché, it is only so because, like all the best clichés, it is rooted deeply in reality.

It was far too early to sleep, but it seemed far too dark not to sleep.

So I keep myself sheltered and hidden under the covers.

"One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms."

The door opens.

I pause the audio.

"…What is it?" Mom's head pokes out of the corner of the door.

"There's someone here to see you."

I groan. "Tell Leo to come back next week. He doesn't need to come every day."

"It's not Leo. It's Hestia."

The cold floor stings my feet. "You're joking."

"She's waiting downstairs. Come on."

My warm palm rests against the door, "Please. Just tell her to go."

There is a sitting silence, and the door closes.

But the door opens, and the silence is suddenly suffocating.
"… Hey."

Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune.

Quem tu, Melpomene...

Melpomene

It's been a while.

Since we last talked.

Everything's just so busy.

So,

How are you?

… That's nice.

Me?

The same as you.

I'm okay, I guess.

It's hard.

But I'm coping.

And I'm not.

It's starting to get colder now.

I rest my chin against the windowsill of my bedroom, observing and listening to the background noise of the world outside.

Outside, there is the roar of water as a multitude of droplets shatter against the streets. The clouds rumble and shiver – they are harsh and deafening and unforgiving.

I trace at the faint outlines of my reflection, but with a breath of air, they are lost. I can no longer see myself.

The windows rattle against the bedroom frames. The pen stops, and I make a mental note to buy some stronger lights.

"You need some better lights."

I laugh. "Sorry, what?" But my throat is dry.

The chair creaks as she spins around. "Your room. It's so dark that it's hurting my eyes. I have no idea how you manage."

I force a smile.

The ballpoint picked up lethargically and half-heartedly, with the urge to sleep rising alongside each peak and trough.

"So, are you going to tell me what you've been working on over there?"

"It's nothing. Nothing important."

I hold it close to my chest, mimicking the cold curvature of the words.

In class, we've moved onto John Keats. Mr Brunner says that Keats was a master of writing emotions – regarded as one of the quintessential elements of the Romantic disposition. And so he says that the only way we could have the full experience was if he read it aloud.

Though everyone else seems to despise it, I do not mind. I listen attentively. I also think that he is doing it more for my benefit than anything else.

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains."

"Wow, Keats is so dramatic," Leo groans. "What's so special about the Romantics anyway? Didn't they just smoke opium and write poems while high?"

Nonetheless, I quite like the poem.

He nudges me. "Hey, you've been kinda quiet today. You okay?"

I sigh. "Can you do something for me today?"

"Uhh. Yeah, sure man. What?"

"Could you just come with me to the specialist this afternoon? Just cause I… um—"

"—Oh yeah sure. It's okay. I've got you." He claps me on the back.

"Thanks."

I say it so quietly that I don't think he even heard me.

"April is the cruellest month."

Has it always been this cold?

In this change of spring, I'm finding it harder to wake up each day.

My eyesight is starting to go now. The doctors tell me that I will start to notice a loss in my field of vision and depth perception. The world seems smaller, like I am peering through the wrong side of a telescope.

I live on the eighth floor of a ten-storied apartment complex just west of the city. It's one of those old brick ones you would see in movies. The ones on the corner block with the large window frames and crowds of traffic moving below.

My mornings follow a strict regimen: I wake up at 7:15, get out of the bathroom at 7:30, finish breakfast by 7:50, and leave for school by 7:55.

This has been my morning for the past five years.

I lock the door behind me and walk to the left – towards the stairs. A door creaks open to my right.

As I descend, I keep a rhythm going in my head: one-two-three, one-two-three. Each step is laboured and calculated. I see my feet disappearing and reappearing. The stairs inhabit a litany of spaces, shrinking and enlarging and vanishing.

But I step into nothingness, and my body lurches forward.

There is a shout or a scream or a noise from behind me, and for a long time nothing really happens.

But then everything seems to happen all at once.

Polyhymnia

When I was younger, I used to love reading. I still love it, for all the reasons I think you are also deeply familiar with. It is the feeling of company, that rush of adrenaline and joy at experiencing something both maddeningly alien and beautifully human. In truth, I am of the opinion that the very best readers are the ones who are usually the loneliest.

But that is not to say that you read just because you are lonely – but you read, and you start to understand.

That we are the observers: we listen, we see, and we wonder. We wonder about the girl we see sleeping on the bus every day. We wonder where she goes every morning, where she was the night before, and why her eyes are always so sad and so, so tired but somehow we understand.

because we are the observers, we understand.

and so we all live lives that are not really our own.

When I wake up, the first thing that I see is a blank sky.

There is a loud humming in my ears, like a heartbeat in slow motion. It takes a while to register the hospital gown and bed, coupled with the tragically off-sync beeping of heart monitors.

The curtain opens, and a nurse walks in. I make out the smile on her face.

"I see you're up! My name's Sarah, and I'm your nurse for today." There is a strange bounce to her voice.

"What happened?" I wanted to ask, but my words come out as mumbled gibberish.

Then a wave of nausea, accompanied by a cold chill. The humming increases. I clench the side of my head.

"Careful, I wouldn't try to move around too much. You have a mild concussion and a fracture in your left arm." Her fingers mesh together. "Not to mention the lacerations."

It is only as she reapplies the bandages that I start to grasp the situation. My fingers run over the mass of stitches on my head – at this point, I realise that my entire left arm is numb.

My words stumble out drunk and haphazardly. "Do you know… how I got to the hospital?" My mind replays the faint remnants of a scream.

Her hands stop for a moment, "Well, I was told that a lady called the ambulance for you. Her name was Helena or Lena or something like that."

The curtain opens again, but the voice is different now.

"Hiya."

"Hey." I lift myself up. "Saw your mum just now. Came rushing in at the same time as mine. Basically brought me a whole five course meal."

Hestia laughs. "Well, she does love you."

A man two beds to the right suddenly launches into a coughing fit.

"…Thanks for calling the ambulance for me."

Chair legs scrape against the floor.

"So how are you feeling?"

"Alright, I guess," I shrug. "I mean, they've got me high on morphine with a whole bunch of metal in my arm."

She winces. "Ouch. How's the head?"

"Fine. Just going to be feeling like vomiting for a week or so."

She rifles through her bag. "Here's what you've missed out on for the past few days. English, we have a new book to go through – finally a novel this time. History, we've started on the Greco-Persian Wars. In Maths, we've –"

I laugh. "In case you haven't noticed, my arm's broken!"

"You're right-handed! Someone's going to have to make sure you don't fail. And no! I'm not going to let you copy my homework anymore."

"What? But I only got through primary school by copying your homework."

"And you didn't talk to me again for three years – how crazy is that?" Her voice is quiet and faraway. I start picking at the cotton of the blanket.

It really is hard.

And just because you know what you should say, doesn't make the decision any easier.

Should have done, could have done, would have done – it's hard to tell the difference.

She slowly places the handouts on the tray next to me.

I look back up.

She is crying.

No, she isn't.

But she is upset.

And here I am, silent and numb and motionless – finally running out of words.

…

Erato

At this point, I think that you would like to know what happened between us.

But I think the sad truth is that this isn't one of those stories. This isn't a story where the damaged teenage protagonist meets a boy/girl that would change his/her life forever. This isn't a story where they fall in love with each other by blurting out 'profound' quotes off Goodreads and this is not a story where they 'fix' each other.

This isn't one of those stories because those stories exist in fiction but rarely in real life; and I am trying to be as honest with you as I can.

This keeps me awake at night, with my eyes boring into the blankness above, listening to the sirens bleeding through the walls. Outside, glass shatters into sharp crystalline snow. My mind runs over its cold, jagged edges – it cuts, and its delicate whites are stained with red.

I watch silent as everything breaks into multifoliate pieces.

I roll on my sides and force my eyes to close, struggling not to be torn between truth and lie.

"In a minute there is time

for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

I spend a lot time thinking over what happened. Things that I've tried hard to forget.

She sits behind me, my head in her lap.

She leans forward, and hair trails down to my cheeks.

Please don't say that.

Her breath is warm.

But I did say it and it happened and we've moved on.

She smells like cinnamon and coffee.

… Do you think things will ever be the same?

Things don't and didn't stay the same, no matter how much we pretended like they had.

She is moving further away from me, face turned away, one hand on the doorknob.

My eyes hurt…
It starts to twist and turn.
But I don't want it to go back to what it was before, because at least we had stopped pretending. Because by pretending, I had lost track of what was real.

I realise that this answer is in no way satisfying or romantic or even a good one. But it's like what I said; this isn't one of those stories, and I'm just trying to be as honest with you as I can.

And it closes with a click.

God, now I'm seeing you inside my head.

Or maybe you were always there.

I don't know. I can't really tell anymore.

"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating."

"What are you listening to?"

I tell her about the song, and I hear her thinking.

"Can I listen to it after?"

I nod and tell her that the song only has two minutes left.

For a while, my hand shuffles around the level edges of a table before another pair of hands settles me into a seat.

At this point, I imagine her looking at me with a mixture of concern and apprehension. I think that I'm starting to get this look quite often now. Braver people would accompany that look with questions about how I was feeling, how I was handling the whole thing, and what it was all like.

To be honest, it's kind of hard to even tell you. So I give her a smile and a shrug. I do not say anything, and I try not to think about it too much, because if I do I'm scared that I won't get the thoughts to stop.

"Okay, we'll play hide and seek."

But to answer your real question, Hestia, I do miss it.

"Hestia, you go hide."

I miss everything being just how I remembered it.

"4, 3, 2, 1!"

Before everything sounded so quiet, so cold, and so so sad.

"I'm gonna catch you!"

instead our feet catch, and we tumble down

I miss being able to feel the sun

you stood there

"Percy!" – and to see the stars

and to serenade the moon.

"Percy!"

I miss–

"… Percy?"
but I–
you were crying…

- I just can't

So Hestia, I think there is a lot that I miss, because there is a lot that has changed.

And I want to tell you about how hard everything really is, about how scared I really am, why I

But no matter how much I want to, I still can't bring myself to say all these things. My thoughts are just so scattered, and they keep slipping through my fingers.

Thalia

Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?! 10

Lately, I've been having the same recurring dream every few weeks. I don't really remember the specifics of it all, but I will try to write down what I can, because I still can't figure out what it means.

In it, I am floating on a sea at night. The water around me is cool like ink, staining my skin so that it disappears.

It is also one of those dreams that seems to go on forever.

Above me, I see the moon, looking wrinkly and pale; it is misshapen and dusty.

Surrounding it were the stars – like millions of fireflies floating against a black canvas.

1, 50, 100, 200, 587.

I feel the current carrying me along as I counted the stars. The waves gently kiss my feet as I rise and fall. They act as a muted lullaby, complete with all its soothing musings.

Somewhere, water spills out from the edges of the sea. It trickles into the nothingness below.

Eventually, my eyes start to close.

Darkness.

Then I fall.

I am drowning and sinking, but no water reaches my lungs. The stars dim until they fade away. I am floating in nothingness, with sight and no sound; just me and the darkness. I feel myself

dissolving

de
com
posing.

"Till human voices wake me, and I drown."

I glance over to my right. "Thanks for walking with me. I know you have basketball practice today."

"It's fine. Besides, I promised your parents that I would look out for you – you're walking onto the road!"

I stagger as he tugs me away — there is a growl of bass as a car or motorcycle or truck accelerates by. The knot in my chest unravels and re-ravels as a lump forms in my throat. I stop walking.

I imagine Leo eyeing me nervously as he sees my trembling hand on the right, and the cast on the left.

"I'm fine," I reassure him. "Just give me a second." I close my eyes and go through the breathing exercises. The air tastes bitter and corrosive – like iron and sulfur.

The noises echo into silence, and the world invariably transforms into a muffled chorus of sound and light.

Truth be told, I am scared.

I am scared of change and the unknown.

I am scared of being misunderstood and being alone.

And I hope that you don't think that I am trying to complain too much, or that my thoughts are overblown and childish. This is just me trying to come to terms with it all.

I guess that I'd forgotten to mention that my family is thinking of moving to the suburbs. This is mainly due to me and my glaucoma, but they won't tell you (or me) this because they do not want to say anything to me.

I am a blind person with a broken arm, but I am not a stupid person. Besides, we can only see so much using only our eyes.

Maybe this is why I am talking to you the way I am, because I am of the hope that you can see underneath it all.

I digress anyhow. I am running out of both time and words.

Terpsichore

I think it's strange, the ways in which people resist change.

For example, some are of the opinion that we are forever stagnant. For them – people do not change. Instead, it is their feelings that change.

Standing on the edges of the road.

I think that there may be some truth in that, but I also wonder about the people who say those things, about the type of people that they are. Truth be told, I think that they are the people who are truly terrified by change.

in the throes of a bitter winter.

But I am starting to realise that it is only at the height of our resistance that everything changes. It is then that change is most painful – the point at which we hate it most.
voices clamour in an array of languages.

Maybe you might understand this better than me, because I'm afraid that I still don't know. But I'm slowly coming to terms with that – the fact that there is a lot of things that I will never know.
the pneumatic hiss of buses coming and going.

I will never know exactly why everything is the way it is: the glaucoma, Hestia, moving away – everything.
the pedestrian crossing sounds like gunfire.

But I'm trying my best to understand, and to be okay about it.
the sun is warm

And I think that's the most anyone can ever ask of you.
I step out tentatively.

"Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too."

I spend the rest of the day packing. Admittedly, it would have been a rather slow and arduous process if not for Hestia.

I don't know really why, but I spent a lot of the time just imagining and reimagining her. Not in a sexual or romantic way, but just in a curious and wistful sort of way – because I think this would be the last time.

I imagined how the light would reflect off her hair, how her hair would fall into her eyes, and how she would gently tuck the strands behind her ear. And I was sad, but it was a happy kind of sad; the kind that settles inside your chest, breaking and mending it all at once.

It wasn't until the afternoon when we'd finished everything that we found ourselves standing in the middle of an empty apartment.

In my mind, I am piecing together a mosaic of her. "So I guess this is it."

In it, she is smiling a sad smile. It is beautiful and it is heartbreaking.

"I guess it is."

"If it matters, I'm really sorry. For everything."

The words finally spill out in measured increments.

She didn't say that it was okay, or that she had forgiven me; she didn't say anything really. And to be honest, I didn't expect or want her to.

But I hope that she will someday. I really do.

Afterwards, I don't remember how, but we managed to find ourselves sitting on the steps outside. One listening and the other watching as

everything

sped

past

in all of its

beautiful

duplicity.

It was about this time that the sun had started to set, and I felt the warmth slipping slowly away from my fingers. So I closed my eyes and asked her about the sky.

She answered in the most beautiful nebulas of pink, orange and blue.

I will end this here for now, because this is one of the last things to go.

But if this is goodbye, then I want to thank you for everything. Really.

And I hope that someday you can understand why I sent this to you.

Incidentally, I think this will be my final 'musing'.

Dear friend,

first I loved her

then I hated her

but it was me that I hated

and I could never tell

her

why.

Lots of love,

Percy

Credit for quotes go to John Green, TS. Eliot, John Keats, Horace, and Sylvia Plath. And also Stephen Chbosky's Perks of Being a Wallflower, without which this story wouldn't exist.

Translations:

'Regard the moon, for she does not hold grudges.' - Euterpe

'I owe it all to you Melpomene …' Melpomene.

I found this a bit after submission, maybe this may have fit the story:

The first thing is to allow yourself to say goodbye, and too often we get afraid of endings, and so we don't allow ourselves a goodbye.
Goodbyes are temporary because no one ever really leaves and nothing lasts forever, and if you can remember those two things that people are always with us because they're in out hearts and in our memory, and the only thing we can depend on is change.

- Amy Poehler