Your Hand in Mine

They say that the most amazing journeys begin with but a single word.

So, which one can I use to begin ours again?

I can't recall the first time I saw your face, but I recall the most important. The first time I truly saw your face, you were smiling, eyes shining like the stars you loved. The night was young, and so were we. It was not so long ago, yet it feels like an eternity. It felt like a beginning all over again, but was it the beginning of the end?

The last time I saw that smile on your face was just before the rocks shattered the glass walls we had built to separate ourselves from the world. We finally felt the brute, inevitable force of the stones, stones that we had thrown at each other, stones that left us both wounded and separated, stones that we used to martyr ourselves.

We sabotaged ourselves with ignorance and summoned the inevitable with our own shortcomings.

Like the rain from the skies they fell over us, destroying with the walls the ground beneath us. Our bridge covered hundreds of miles in a brief, harrowing span of time but could collapse under a single wrong footstep. Every movement was a gamble and every raindrop a waterfall. We couldn't live any other way. We were too passionate, too young, too naive, and too idealistic. We were two people who could feel no emotion that wasn't at its most extreme.

Today, I stand alone in the less-than-metaphysical world, awaiting you grimly on that hillside where we first discovered each other within each other. My innocence is in pieces, and so are you, I fear. Every heartbeat is as fast as a jackhammer with just as much force. I still feel the chills of your skin touching mine even though I don't know where you are. I don't know where you are, and it stabs my veins with guilt and anxiety.

I wish you were here.

How did we begin this fall, a fall that started so sweetly and ended so bitterly?

I don't recall the first time we met, but I remember the first time I understood you. You were a bound book adorned by rough, pale skin, haywire blonde strands of hair and those gleaming eyes with so much entrancing life within them. You were a masterpiece that held nothing but intrigue for me, one that I was dying to open. No matter how frightening the tale could be, I'd learn it like the scripture of ancient mythology, as you appeared to me as more of a fairy tale than a piece of reality.

I was alone.

I was in a place where even if I could understand anyone, I couldn't understand myself, and neither could anyone else. I was angry at times, happy at others. I could hate in an instant what I spent a lifetime loving, and I never knew why. I was an unsolvable riddle, and living as such was terrifying.

I was lost.

When I saw you, I saw a kindness, a curiosity, a cracked idealism somewhere within your eyes. You walked with grace and poetry in every step, you smiled such a small smile that radiated enough joy to end a war, and it initiated a ceasefire within me.

I wanted more.

And more you gave me.

My curiosity gave way to passionate learning. Through the flaws of your skin, the words from your mouth, the tales you could weave, the love that you gave, the longing, distant gaze you gave towards the endless skies, I pieced together the lexicon that decoded a masterpiece.

I knew you.

I knew that you were a masterpiece with burnt pages, others erased and eliminated, others torn into slices barely attached to their parchment, and many empty pages towards the back, pages both expectant of the future but fearing a fate like the tattered ones before them. Most, however, were holding onto their binding, spelling out words I never imagined would go so amazingly together, with glorious descriptions, dazzling events and philosophies I found kinship to, ones that I held alone, desperate for someone else to see my rose-tinted glasses.

I was swept away.

You could speak with such ferocity and power that I couldn't help but reply, willing to discuss everything that I knew just to hear what you'd say. You told me so many stories that transported me into worlds I had never been in. You told me you wanted to be a storyteller, to bring new worlds to fruition from the dust of your mind. The idea was amazing to me. You were amazing to me. When you told me you just wanted me to understand who you were, that even though you had your faults you did your best to be a worthwhile person, something clicked in me. Fate, circumstance, identification, a bond, your hand in mine.

I wanted you.

You were still such a mystery even when you were open to me, as if I was given the right to read something that I could not own. I wanted that book to be mine. I wanted to take it with me, to repair it, to complete those lonely pages, to give it the care and attention it deserved.

I loved you.

Did you ever see it? Notice it? The way I would glance at you as you glanced at the stars, both of us amazed at what we saw? Would you believe it if I did? It always pained me how we could stand in a mirror side by side, and we saw beauty only in the person next to us.

I valued you.

I was afraid it wouldn't last, that strife would tear us apart; that we would fall apart, splitting in half at the seams. I didn't want to be another set of torn pages to you, a dying mist of eraser shavings floating away in the unforgiving breeze as ash from an inferno, leaving only scars on the skin of the paper. I wanted to be eternal.

I wanted you to be eternal.

You and I were both drifters, alone in the world. I was worried I wasn't good enough to deserve an eternity to remember with someone else. You believed the same thing. And yet, that's all we wanted to give each other.

I was just like you.

I never looked inside myself, truly had never seen what kind of story I was. I had so many awful memories, moments of disgusting guilt, so many people I had hurt, that I dared not to look any further. I didn't write willingly, I let the story dictate itself within myself. I could never bring myself to solve my own riddle, because I was afraid of the answer.

You thought I was a masterpiece.

You, the girl who stood tall and narrow, flowing in the breeze like a willow tree. The girl with an entire universe in her mind. The girl who had little but gave a lot. The girl with such a gorgeous face with thin, flesh-colored lips that were capable of more than my entire body was. The girl who was everything to me saw me as her world.

You solved me.

What did you see in me? What sort of fascination could even compare to how I felt about you? Why did you care on a level anywhere near the level of which I did you? I don't expect an answer to ever be given, but that's okay. I understand, because I'm the same way- I can only string words together and hope they form some form of structure. I do hope someday, you'll tell me the answer to my own riddle, or was the answer you all along?

I was privileged.

You saw inside me better than anyone else could. You said you saw things inside me that you wished you could claim. You saw beauty, charm, brilliance, compassion, loveliness within the twisted sinews and stilted veins that operated by my own erratic heartbeat. I had never seen myself as beautiful, charming, brilliant or compassionate, and I could only confirm that I was a loving person because I loved you. I had always lived with myself as an uncomfortable tenant, acting on impulse, trying to bring life to everyone else to compensate for the peace I couldn't find within me until you placed your hand in mine as if you were the privileged one.

And yet... you loved me.

So why did you fall?

I don't remember the moment things began to break. I could only note a difference in your behavior, a dimming of the light in your eyes. You persisted in saying that there was nothing wrong. I had told you so many times of your own majesty, and it was something you never accepted like I hoped, like I dreamed you would. Was I too loud a song for you?

I thought you were perfect, even if I thought I understood that you were not.

Did I make you feel as though I expected too much? Is that why you ran from me? Is that why you hid? Is that why you lied? Is that why I found you, a mangled heap lying on the cornerstone of an old building, unsuccessful in your mission? Why, oh why, was I so upset to know what you did when the truth was that I couldn't bear to fail for your sake?

Why could I not remember how much we were alike?

Why would you leave me like that?

Why did you try and run into death's arms? Wouldn't you have seen that you would have killed us both? That I would have died for you? That I would restrain you from running even if it pulled me towards the edge? Even now, it turns my stomach in knots, because I fear that I have failed you still.

When you fell, I could feel it. I wish I was there. Before you had even fallen apart I was already trying to put you together again. I would spend every moment until my dying breath doing that for you. I could only run and find the masterpiece torn on the ground, all of her pages daring to fly away.

Why did I love you so much?

Because I knew that you were my mirror. I saw brilliance in you, and in turn you showed me my own. When I remembered that even you were flawed, I remembered I was as well. I fell apart too swiftly to be prepared for your fall.

There were too many things that we lost in the fall.

Through every anxious moment praying for opposing miracles, every heated exchange, every accusation, every bloody name that scraped by our throats in resistance, through every fight and every moment that we spent trying to run away from each other, turning shame into spite and reflecting our self-loathing onto each other, we lost our spark. We lost our pride, our hope, our dignity, our innocence. Worst of all, we lost our idealism, the trait that we shared, the spiritual being that connected us when we joined our hands together, lost in the stars and each other.

I felt inadequate. Was I not worth living for?

I feel nothing but shame for every moment of it. I wish you'd come back here, to where I first discovered you. I wish I could beg your forgiveness; I wish I could take your hands again and convince you with every cell in my being that I still loved you, that it was myself I hated. I'd silence any attempt of yours to tell me that you felt the same way, that you felt less than you were before. I'd tell you every truth I had and hoped that you'd believe just one. I'd fix and clean off all of your pages and restore you to your deserved glory.

Why did I spend years building you up and only moments tearing you apart? If I traversed every corner of the world, could I find all of the pages flowing in the wind? Could I collect them and piece them back together?

I wish so badly that I could.

I love you still. I love you to the point that it aches. I love you beyond reason. I love you so much that it frightens me; because that's the only way I know how to love.

I haven't lost everything in the fall.

I've sat up here for days, weeks, months or something like that, waiting for your spirit to return to your body. I know that we've spoken since the fall, but is it the same? Our words are fewer, more mundane, the color muted, the passion subdued, the light dim. I'm waiting for you to return, in all of your glory, in the flesh.

When I finally see you, I can't believe it. I only envisioned you coming back to me in my dreams and the afterlife.

I'm so glad you're alive.

I see the light in your eyes from a mile away. Your steps are cautious, still suffering from the lingering breaks of bone and binding, and I'm still too stunned to run up to you and capture you in my embrace. I stand up here at the top of the hill, liable to fall over the edge as I tremble, knowing that I must start rebuilding both you and me again. It's not hesitancy that shakes me; it's the fear of failure.

When you fell, I fell.

So if you stand, so shall I stand.

It feels like a nanosecond and an eternity until you come up here. We stare at each other awkwardly, the few feet between us an ocean of fear. How do we restart?

I only know one way how.

I take your hand in mine.

I smile, gazing into your eyes. How the light survived, I'll never know, but it's as beautiful as ever. You smile back. We're both terrified yet excited. Once again, we're mirroring each other.

It is time for our journey to start again.

The race to eternity can often become a battered, broken, and bloody mess. Yet, I'll run it if you keep your hand in mine.

Will you do the same for me?

The night is lit up by a million stars, and the air chills me to the bone. The grass is faded brown, and it glows in the light above us. Our footsteps, as hesitant and uneven as they may be, leave lasting impact in the soil of the Earth we seem to have finally entered. Your skin still feels like fireworks in a dark space, and it lights me up in turn as I memorize every moment and object in this set piece of time, so I can remember the beginning of our journey.

The beginning of our new journey is heralded by a word so tired and true, so worn and weathered, but it's the only one I can think of right now.

"Hello."

My voice is a whisper to tame the raging oceans between us, and it pulls you closer to me. The riddle inside me is unbinding, and your fingers tighten around mine as if they are remastering every page.

And away we go.