Endosymbiosis

28. Pain

When her knees gave out and she collapsed in an attempt to get away from those memories, I caught her. She buried herself in my arms sobbing, trying to disappear into me, and I enveloped her, not knowing if I still remembered how to do so... How to cover someone with my arms and try to prove that we were no longer alone, making the warmth of my presence and my intention to relieve her of that pain the only things I had to offer.

I understood the feeling that made her fall, from all of the times my legs gave out... From the time my world fell apart. I felt what she was feeling, my aches rising to the surface so much that I had to dip my face into her neck to keep from collapsing too.

"I used to imagine her as a rotting body in a grave..." She whispered into my arms. "Buried there, when I decided to get on with my life... There, when I found a reason to laugh; there, when I found another one to cry; there, when there was so much to tell... But there, never to hear me again." Her eyes lifted to mine like jewels that could break. "Waiting for me... For when the same nothing that had stolen her from me would cover me too... And then I would stay there, beside her, for time to pass us by... Until nothing else of us was left to prove that we existed before. And imagining her like that was so much better than this..." Tears streamed from her eyes between each word and I touched her face to wipe them away. "I just wanted to go back..." She begged softly, maybe to me, maybe to the universe, maybe to herself, resting her face in my hand. "I just wanted to go home..."

Me too.

"I can take you..." But she shook her head from side to side, as if the answer hurt.

"No... It doesn't exist anymore..."

One day we lived in secluded paradises, but, too easy for things that shouldn't be so fragile, we were left to soil and mud, in the infinity of a horizon that would not forgive us. We only had the strength to explore it... And the determination to continue existing in it.

I hated that she had lost everything; hated that she no longer had a home, like me; and I wanted to promise her some other one after all this... But I didn't keep even the promises I made to myself. So I just let that grave silence grow around us, until she wanted to break it once more:

"It's the third time she died for me..." Doxy whispered. "When she left me behind... When I read her last letter... And now this..." It was like she could disappear at any moment. "I was so wrong... So wrong to hope she could be in the..." In the core? Was that why she really wanted to get there? Doxy was unable to continue.

And then she tore herself from me and fled down the halls.