Moonshine

Violating Your Conscience Is Your Very Own Punishment

Madness—fucking madness.

Madness—sheer, unrelenting madness. It crept up, clawing through his mind with the quiet precision of an unseen hand, till he found himself gasping under the weight of it. And it all started with her. Her face, her touch, her very breath—that's all it took to send him spiraling into this bottomless pit. A fool, an absolute fool to believe he'd make it out unscathed.

He rowed, yes, as though rowing could save him. Rowed to what? To where? There was no end, no shore to be seen; he was rowing toward the very edge of his sanity, and perhaps past it. The world had closed in, narrowed to the memory of her, relentless and unforgiving. She was there, as clear in his mind as the iron taste of his despair. He didn't want to remember, yet he couldn't bear to forget. The paradox ate him alive.

Anxiety—no, something darker, something that clawed from the inside—took him. It was a vicious thing, creeping through mind and soul alike, though he was never certain he possessed either. But she, she was proof of them. Or had been. She had been there, and in that shared breath, in that whisper of skin against skin, she had carved her existence into his very marrow.

And even now, he could taste her, as if her presence had stained his lips. And why? Why had he let himself taste her again and again? Her touch had become a curse, a brand on his skin. He could see her lying there—her hair spread like a storm on his pillow, her warmth tangled in his sheets. It was all so clear, so vivid, he thought he might reach out and find her there, as real as the beating of his heart. And yet she was gone. And he was left chasing the ghosts she'd left behind.

He was a man condemned, dreaming of a warmth that had long since turned to dust. He wanted her to ache, to yearn as he did. He wanted her as ensnared as he. But he knew—he knew that this fantasy was madness, a delirium born from solitude and longing. It was no more than the fool's dream of capturing the moon, of begging it to draw close and touch him once more with its cold fire. And he, he would wait and yearn, crossing the world if he had to, his very soul stretched thin across the chasm of distance.

Impossible? Perhaps. But then, wasn't it always? And still, he rowed on.