i. meeting you: when I saw you, the world didnāt reroute on a new axis but the stars seemed to glimmer a little more than I remembered them doing the night before. from the moment our hands brushed, something in me shivered, some part of my heart shook, a form of a yes. a yes, you belong in my life, a yes, you are meant to matter. but we clashed in a storm of fire and ice and it took me what looking back seems like a lifetime to realize that youāve changed me, that a part of me recognized your scars as the same as mine the moment you spoke a part of my name.
ii. understanding you: it took breaking, it took sobbing in the middle of night and realizing that yes I can be alone with you. itās this moment, where I see you looking at me, not like you can save me, no. but like you recognize the shadows dancing on my skin, the faint bruises and clenched fists and the ache inside my heart. And the world grows quiet, like itās giving this moment the weight it deserves, and itās in the darkness that I realize we can change the universe.
iii. trusting you: and our hands grow bloody as our hearts open, spilling part of us on the ground that the other picks up and remakes. forging a sword, a shield, a song out the echoes we let break away from our souls. somehow I realize the voice in the back of my mind, giving me hope, giving me faith, sounds a lot like yours, it sounds like the way you say my name and I say yours the same way. as absolution, as something almost like salvation, as a need that I canāt live without
iv. loving you: and itās when youāre threatened, itās when youāre hurt and the rage that raises up inside me contains the bitten scream of āmineā. itās when you take my hand, you take my burden like I havenāt transformed myself into atlas to save you. Itās when you gaze into my eyes like iām something worth worshipping, like iām something worth burning the universe for. and it comes and goes in waves until one day I wake up and my first thought is you, and when I dream the last name I utter is yours
v. losing you: but the stars that stayed silent at our turning point arenāt content to watch us, no they want to test us but they didnāt understand that loving you Ā stopped being something that scared me the moment I realized it because, darling, I donāt know where you end and where I begin. Ā so yes, I lost you to space and time, I nearly lost you to fate but we were always fighters and so I know youāll come back to me, I know youāll come home to me. Ā and our devotion outstrips the fairytales because we were never guaranteed a happy ending, with our dirty hands, with our sly smiles, with our cuts and scars but weāve made the constellations want to chart our names
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Ā vi. finding you: Ā when we crash back together, the world narrows down to the sound of a beating heart, pounding loud enough to be a greek chorus and itās a welcome change from the way my chest seemed empty. I always knew that in a crowd of thousands Iād be able to meet your eyes, to find you. and with our smiles the universe restarts, with my name dropping from your lips the sun reignites, because we are the center of the story, from the beginning up till now and weāre only just past the first chapter.
