I look at you from across the room and, suddenly, you are radiant, cosmic, a very old star and I am a very young girl. You are sailing high above me and I am drifting up, up, reaching out for you with one hand, wanting to catch up to you and knowing I never will. This is a story that has been told a hundred times before. Girl meets girl. Girl loves girl. Girl loses girl. You’ve read this poem before, right? I love this girl still, and seeing her makes my palms sweat and my skin turn to stardust in her wake, even years later. But, I cannot be with her. I do not want to anymore, not even if she wanted to be with me. There is another, and they are salty and sticky-sweet, a gaping ocean, gasping for air, kissing my toes as I stand on the shoreline. I watch them get swept away and brought back to me over and over. I wonder if this is the universe’s doing or if they sends themselves away. I don’t know which option I’d prefer. They’re both so tragic. Neither story is happy, but both of these stories are beautiful. But, there is a universe in which all three of us are happy, and I don’t know if any of us are together in it. In one universe, me and the blazing star run off together into the ink-black sky and she takes me to other galaxies and I hold onto her until I can’t stand the heat and we are so happy. And in another, the ocean cradles me in its gentle push and pull and never lets me go, never lets me sink and I sing them songs like the sirens do at night and we are so happy. But, water cannot exist in space without a container. I am too weak to hold the ocean fully. I am too cold to hold that bright star’s hand. Maybe I am meant to be with one of them in the end. Maybe I was meant to be with both of them at their times and now they are over. Maybe I was never meant to meet either of them at all. But, I doubt the latter so fully because my sky would be so dull without the stars and my life would be so dry without the ocean. So, maybe, one day, we can all learn to exist together, here, in this world. I want that. I’m trying to learn how to be good enough for the stars to look at me again, for the ocean to want to touch my toes. It does against its own will because I do not leave the beach. I’m going inside now. It’s time I do some growing. It’s time I become something other than human. It’s time you both became human to me.
the stars, the sea and me, by windy sharpe (via windysharpe)
