I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.
I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;
With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit’s pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.
—Sara Teasdale
I sent a bathyscaphe down your heart
To see if I could find myself
Amongst your memories.
It was a selfish thing, I know,
This quest for mirrors—
But I did learn my lesson,
As nothing is reflected
In the dark.
The grass began to grow back sooner than expected, but by then they had already fled to places where they could maintain the illusion of living on a parallel timeline. Names had been scratched off phonebooks, and lovers they had relinquished in the middle of the night had all but melted into an unreliable mesh of fingers and tongues. At random times they stopped mid-step and wondered what it would be like to go back and start anew, or what if it had never happened—but it was too late. And yet, they wondered.