Layers of Love
He could die.
And really that was nothing special, nothing sad. Everybody died.
Lifetimes were only finite entities; they could only burn for so long.
Except everybody didn't know how they would die, everybody didn't know that they would die young, that they would die soon, everybody couldn't feel the instrument of their death growing and ripping and spreading and consuming.
Everybody didn't die a little everyday.
He could die.
And really that was nothing special, nothing sad.
It was tragic and heartbreaking and wrong. And he could do nothing about it, could do nothing to change his fate. Could only stare at his hand, run his fingertips across those beads and pray.
Pray that faith would be enough.
Except he knew it wasn't, always had known.
The prayer beads that kept his death at bay were only delaying the inevitable, they weren't stopping anything, they weren't really doing anything. Just giving him more time.
More time to make memories that would have to be left behind. More time to learn what it's like to love something he can never really have.
Like dirt roads that have yet to be discovered, roads where he knows that someone will see his footsteps and know that he has been there. Roads where everything is new and strange and wild and crushed by nothing. Roads that have yet to become roads that people will travel and make common and worn and predictable.
And he likes these unpredictable roads, loves these roads that aren't really roads because he doesn't know where they are going, because he doesn't know what is at the end.
And he loves rainbows because they are bright and colorful and brilliant and always shine brightest after gray storms. And he loves the fact that such beauty can smile in the wake of such gloom and torment.
She loves them too, but she loves them because they make her think that yesterday and tomorrow can't be so different if a rainbow can shine equally as bright in both.
And he loves the tears she cries, at night, when she thinks no one is watching. He hates why, but he loves the tears. He loves the sadness, he finds comfort in the knowledge that she aches, that she pains, that she feels just as much as he does.
Mostly he loves that she hides.
Because during the day she laughs and she smiles and she hums and she is cheerful and he can pretend she isn't like him, he can pretend that she will live her life happily like everyone else.
He loves her secret pain because he won't ever love those everybody else people, and when she smiles he can pretend she is one of those people.
And it hurts him to forget, like those nights when she is alone, mourning in the unforgiving darkness for the days she has lost and the days she will never have. And he isn't supposed to find people like him, people who measure life by days lost, and he isn't supposed to love her, because it will hurt and tear and claw and crush.
Because he could die.
And he loves the night, because it's black and dark and has no memory. And he thinks maybe he can love her beneath the light of the moon.
He loves the way she trembles when he touches her lips, he loves the way she shivers when he whispers, and he loves the way she stretches and curves and gasps when he touches her. He thinks maybe he loves the way she's not really there, he thinks maybe he loves being with the shadow that's her.
He thinks maybe it will hurt less to love and lose a shadow than to love and lose her.
But mostly he loves that she leaves. He loves that she goes back to future, to the tomorrows that she's missing. He loves that she leaves him here in the past, in her forgotten yesterdays to find more things to love, more things to miss.
He loves that she leaves because he thinks he knows what it will be like when he finally does die. He thinks maybe it won't hurt so much to love things if he already knows what it's like to lose them. He thinks maybe it won't hurt so much to love her if he already knows what it's like to watch her leave.
Because he knows the ache and the regret and the need. And he thinks maybe it won't torment him, plague and haunt him so much now that he knows.
And so he loves her shadows and he loves watching her leave because he knows he can never have her.
And he thinks maybe it will hurt less if he remembers that.