No matter how you stack me. No matter how you arrange me. No matter how you look at me. I am still here and I am still the same person made of the same things. I regret nothing.
Blurry eyes focused on a stormy horizon, my toes stepping dangerously close to an edge from which there was no escape.
The sole of my shoe scraped against gravel, disrupting a small pile of stones, sending them cascading down the cliff face. My eyes faltered, lowering, fingers trembling as I peered over the edge. The pebbles bounced, disappearing before the crashing waves below swallowed them whole.
I took another step forward, concentrating. Wondering what it felt like when the unforgiving sea swept away the small rocks. Suffocating them beneath the frothy waters.
Why was I there?
The wind whipping curls against my cheek, I tightened my grip around the book in my hand. My odd salvation. Comfort found in common words, and hope offered in the form of a message I knew somehow had been meant for me to see.
My chest ached, but not from what it usually did. It ached to see. It ached to know.
Who?
I took a step back.
My hands shook, palms sweaty against the slick book cover.
It was impossible, what I wanted.
Another step.
A stranger.
My stranger.
You.
Quivering nerves spread to my legs, stealing the breath from my lungs and pushing me to the ground. Fingers scraped the rough dirt beneath me, and the book rested in my lap. Eyes no longer trained on the gray sky, I looked down as the pages fell open across my thighs...
And their shape and their hair and their eyes and their smell and their voice. That suddenly, these things can exist and you're not quite sure how they existed without you knowing about them before.
I see it all. I still see her in you. She's there. You just have to look.
I closed my eyes.
She was there. Confused. Wondering what led my feet to that spot.
Asking me if it was worth it.
And she was hurt, hauntingly scarred, but full of something else. A yearning to start over. A desire to let go. A wild hope.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, I couldn't see him anymore. He was no longer standing there, hiding me from myself.
Instead, he'd been replaced by another. The mottled, unrecognizable face of a stranger. The one who had written in the margins.
And I could see me.
Facing you rather than hiding. Reaching for your outstretched hand.
Releasing him. Letting go.
Saving myself while you saved me in return.