You, in the darkness (become).
The body is first to succumb, warm-water weakness seeping through the cracks. The mind is next, the center of the self: you can choke it with fear, darkness flowing in phosphorescent waves, like acid waters in a stardust wasteland. Once, long ago, you observed this for the first time. (Had the darkness crept in slowly, until it crashed upon the rock shore of your body, or had you swallowed it all at once?)
You, in the darkness (remember).
Remember your father's face, his strong hands. Long legs moving away—clothed ones, furry ones (two by two by—). Out and on with the shirt and tattered trousers, no jacket this time. It's wrapped around your mother's shoulders. You watched them; you called for them; you wanted them close. Come back.
(It's too dangerous. Not yet. When you're older.)
She held you to her chest. He swung you in his arms. Remember his warmth, her light. They can't see your dreams, but you have them written just like this—folded up against your chest, hidden away like crystals. You'd build a castle of clever words to only have them look at you.
(Remember their absence).
Fingers on the helm; let the darkness steal your face. No longer are you weak. No longer alone. Pain is your master, your guide. Your capacity for pain is endless.
(Theirs was not.)
A star—sickly point of light to a hollow body, touching your temple. You remember it; as a child, you held it in your hands, silver shards behind your ribs. You began this way; you died to be remade. You, in the darkness (reborn). A girl, a star in orbit. She is born from light alone.
(And you, no longer a child.)
She is young, untempered, but she leaves an afterimage behind; Like the dying of suns, she remains. Remember—you can forget it all, be born anew. Slated clean and holy, like the dark and drowning sky. She can repudiate you; she can be your savior, too. Only to taste her—and oh, how you thirst.
(Lips at her throat, her shore, hurling ocean of salt and island sand. Drink and drink and drink, unquenched.)
You kneel before the dais as if to forge Vader's embrace. Holding the helmet, the dark Force floods you. The darkness, too, remains—it will have stars, and it will have her. Standing goddesslike before you with the galaxy behind. You think that you could hold her hair in your fingers, and she could touch your skin, to find only neglect — a black ship drifting through black space. Only neglect and reclusion and you, in the darkness (abandoned). She, in the darkness (alight).
Don't look back. Remember the darkness in you.
Her body and mind are breath and light (silica wind and unspoiled sky). Sand pricks him where her teeth might be. Perhaps she feels the pain, as well; perhaps she knows. Come into me, then. Enter me. Touch me, turn me. The stars only fade, and we are both forgotten things.
Don't look back.
(Remember the darkness is you.)