I think somewhere along the way, she forgot that she was incandescent. Not incandescent in the sense that she glowed brighter than anyone else that I’d ever known, because she didn’t. But in the way that she let her brilliancy die down because she begged to be silent. I used to be in love with her. The way her dead ends swept the bony shelf that claimed to be her collar bone. The way the corner of her mouth twitched when someone said something seemingly unbearably stupid, of course when it was only obvious to her. To be honest, I don’t really know if she got lost on purpose, or if it was some bulls*** greater scheme. She was always like that, looking for something beyond what she was dealt. She had the pressure of the entire world crushing her into the surface of the earth, and maybe that’s why she disappeared into thin air. At least, the part I loved did anyway. I was never liked that. I never tried to take on the problems of the world because I never needed to, it just wasn’t my cause. But everything was hers. The way she devoured the sorrows of the planets with her desert eyes literally shook the heck out of me. I wanted to understand why, but I never could. Then, she was gone. I loved her in the way that, at the time, I thought was how she deserved to be loved. To be deemed as brilliant and passionate. I loved every inch of the bloody earth that her fingers simply dangled over, but I guess I just couldn’t love her the way she needed to be. What she needed was to have the sins of the stars and the poverty of the galaxy lifted off of her pulverized and spindly body. It wasn’t although I was terribly confused when she gone. It took about all I had in me to survive the universe falling apart in my freaking hands. It was as though tiny galaxies had ceased to exist as she left, and they were ripping their way through me, begging for one last gasp of fresh air before going out. She was fine without me, I didn’t expect anything else. She left me for someone who gave her exactly what I couldn’t, an escape. A bridge from this world, to a different one. One in which she could be a princess, high in the sky, in her own castle. One where she could be selfish like the rest of us, free from herself and the chains she had binding her back in this world. I could never give her that. My warn and beaten hands could never caress her mind as they did her bamboo yarn woven back. And as she drifted away from me, I slowly let go. It’s interesting, the way humans persist on various things. Some survive based off the existence of another. She was my lifeline. The way she moved when she pirouetted through the cosmos bare, the way she seemingly acted like she didn’t give a concern. I was not that for her. When she left me, she became who she needed to be to survive. She had her own lifeline, and it took everything from her. It was as if her soul left it’s gaunt body and in turn sold it self to a ghost. A demon would have had more life than she did. I guess this new love took everything she had to give. No longer did she dream of saving the world, but only of lying under it. It’s kind of unsettling, to read a story and know nothing about the narrator. To feel a connection with someone, when you don’t know anything about them. My name, my gender, my purpose, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We can be the same. We were given life by someone who fell in love with drugs, and it took their life away.