may shatter on impact (tronnor)

Epilogue. Ages & Ages Ago

One Year Later

When I look back on it, I was never broken, and I don't think that I really wanted to die.

I just wanted to see my brother again and I was willing to do anything to get that.

I still do.

Only now, I can see him in the hallways of Oak Hill and I can see him in the flowers of the cliff that I go to every anniversary and I can see him in my high school diploma and I can see him in my first album.

I see Tyler, too.

I see him in the brightly colored flowers that grow by the fence in my house. I can see him in my first album, too. I see everyone in the album. I can see the gun and I can see Leah's blood and I can see that way that Jamey cried for Tyler and I can see it in the wind that shot by my ear that night. I can see Mariah and Blessing and I can see all the people who forgave me and all the people that didn't.

I can see Connor and Nora and Zoe and Dan and Phil and Alfie.

I can see the people that made me, and most of all, I can see who I made me.

Ages ago I had never seen a place that wasn't called home, that wasn't Clarke Lake, that wasn't small forests and beaches and homes pressed too close together and kids that it feels like I've never gone without.

Ages ago I had never met a boy with eyes the color of the sea and hair thrown through wind and water that still comes out perfect and a smile that lights up the world.

Ages ago I had never shaken at the sound of thunder.

It seems like forever has come along, a forever made up of fear and practice rooms and piano keys and kisses stolen in hidden rooms and notebooks with lyrics about a boy with naturally colored hair. It seems like forever ago, when -

When the world shattered at the sound of a door creaking open and lights flickering off.

When I lost everything, and everything that I thought I knew shattered on the impact of blood dripping to the ground and a gun seeming to fall without a sound.

When Tyler Oakley shot through the perfect panes of glass that used to be my life.

When I survived and then thought I didn't deserve to.

And I think that I know differently now.

Now, I am free and now I am like the rocks standing steady against the waves, or the sun painted into the sea, and now I am Troye Sivan, and I am more than the boy who taught me all the fish in the sea and more than the boy who paints the constellations for me and more than the lives shattered ages ago.

I sit in the silence of my old backyard, curled up inside a blanket with my heart beating slowly and the trees bending to the will of of the wind. If I look to my left, then I'll see the darkness and cover of a forest of trees, their shadows overlapping into one mess of black, one mess of hidden secrets that can't be found in the daylight. If I look to my right, I'll see the second half of my childhood, my home, and a future left untouched, unbroken, unshattered by a gun that was shot fifty two times.