twice upon a time

While others find their strength in holding on, your strength comes from letting go.

As if it had taken far too much giving to be this empty. I can only take.

(But this is the part I don't say out loud.)

When lives are forged upon lives, our parallel stories start anew, and every fragment of ourselves we don't relinquish to the other --

(His stretched-out soul still burned with rancor and desire left over from the storm that all started with her promise, long , long ago.)

"Stay," he almost snarled his plea as he watched her part the ocean and made it run in streams, taking her further and further away. "It's me."

He gorged on her insolence, and let it turn him into something shrouded and cold (and just as scary.)

(And so when he saw her walking towards him where he sat staring at the water, he was unimpressed.)

He knew he reflected in her glasslike eyes the acrimony, the eternal hurt.

She tipped his chin and smiled. "Cheer up some. One of us shouldn't spend a lifetime mourning something we can't define."

He drew his face away.

"Another waits for you." She glanced back at the water, her expression strangely impassive. "But you won't find her here. You have to leave this place."

"Will she live forever?" His voice, unused for so long, came out as an angry, cynical bark. It startled him.

She placed a hand over his arm, daring him to shake her off. "No, but once you find her, you'll have your humanity back. Consider it a gift."

"I was never angry with you," he lied, partly because he felt afraid again. "I was just sad because I thought you've lost your way."

"I'm here," she replied simply.

(He knew better than to look further. The promise of the morning was about as far as they got.)

He sighed, his gaze drawn to the mass of loose waves and tendrils that cascaded halfway down her back, gleaming chestnut in the dying sun.

Unbidden, he reached out. "In my dreams, you wore your hair like this."

She leaned into this touch, to the flowing warmth that pulsed from his palm, and pretended that she was living too.

("...let me become the shadow of your shadow, the shadow of your hand...")