Monsters are usually faceless |t.r.|

Ch. 5 - We forget that despite everything, we are not together, not yet

Lover, put your hand in mine, minimize the distance. What are we except roads leading to another? What are our hands, if not creatures desperate to find their way home? What is your skin, if not my comfort? For someone that was born into a war, safety is a luxury and then, here you are.

Lover, star-crossed lover, let me tell you a secret. We are always destined to lose. Winning is not a part of nature, in nature no one wins, someone just survives. This is a circle we cannot escape from. In nature, no one wins and only one survives.

Darling, my sweet creature, what are you doing with my grief? The last time I saw it, you were caressing softly, holding it in your palms. I never asked you to take care of it, despite its ugliness, despite being a death sentence, the grief it's mine.

But you took it, you accepted my grief wordlessly, you lifted it so softly it was truly a poem. And I know it's the same grief, keeping it in your hands for a while doesn't take back the rotting, but I swear, when you gave it back, it was lighter. It didn't crush me down anymore. Didn't suffocate me the same way. For the first time, I could actually live with my grief, imagine a future with it.

Lover, beautiful lover, wonderful lover, do you have grief similar to mine? Do you have a darkness you want me to hold for you, a catastrophe so heavy the weight has started to break you down? Is there anything in the world you'd like to share with me? Beautiful or ugly. I can bear both. I'm here for both.

Lover, my one and only lover, why do you carry both your burden and mine? It doesn't seem fair, how I wonder through life weightless and you get dragged further down by everything terrible that has happened to both of us. Let me share the burden with you. Let me share my life with you, everything I am and everything that has happened to me. Let me take care of your darkness. I promise I'll love it like my own.