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00 ☆ ( "AT NIGHT, YOU LINGER

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00( "AT NIGHT, YOU LINGER." )

I was eighteen when I stabbed someone for the first time

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I was eighteen when I stabbed someone for the first time.

But, I was also eighteen when I met my first love.

It was a cruel kind of love, a love that I could touch with my very hands, but it could never be held onto forever. It was a love that reminded me of the fool I am, and the fool I was. If I knew that I loved a man any sooner than I did, perhaps I would've saved that love for a little longer. But I didn't. I didn't know up until our last moments together–up until I watched our year of walking on the same tightrope causing one of us to fall off.

He reminded me of a star, a singular star–one that was closest, biggest, and warmest in our solar system. It brought light, humanity, and routine, but it also brought lament, desperation, and distress. But, my, was he the most beautiful star that one could admit, and my, was he the one that I desired to spend the rest of my life with.

Or so I thought.

Being eighteen was standing on the edge of adulthood and childhood. Yes, I was considered an adult by age, but living in a house where a question always went unanswered or swept under the rug, I was a child in knowledge. I was a fearful little idiot who believed they were ready to enter a world they did not belong in. I'm sure he knew that too, but wanting to savor what would've been his gateway back to being a child, words went unspoken.

I stand in front of the stars now, the most beautiful body replaced by the nocturnal planet up above. The breeze blows me astray, side-to-side like I was swaying to the night's quiet hymn. The red scarf nuzzled around my neck drew me to a similar one in a window display, the mannequin still and poise.

But I cast my eyes away, for any memory that would lead me to that forbidden past would never be a good one. I cast my eyes far into the vast oblivion, into the sky above me, and back down to the light gray concrete. Five years, I remind myself. It's been five years.

I walk the bridge, a thing I used to fear when I was still eighteen. I was deathly afraid of heights, but now, all of it is familiar. The height became no shock, and no matter how thin the sidewalk was, I could still walk on it. Back then, even hanging off the bars made me cry out in fear.

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