To The Moon and Back

𝟒𝟎 | 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫

F A L L I N G S T A R
a meteor or shooting star.

T O  T H E
M O O N & B A C K

YOU ARE MY deep end, I think as I stare at her. Her back, covered by a thick, black sweater, presses again the cement gravestone. The words Luna Kingsley, a beloved daughter and sister, engraved into the dirty asphalt. I have never known shallow—actually, Pandora was shallow. But Aurora Kingsley is every beautiful and unexplored corner of this world. Every cave, trench—fucking—I don't know. But she's the deepest depths and most unseen colours of this universe and every other one surrounding ours, too.

Like a black hole in space that absorbs anything that manages to get sucked into it. Everyone and thing cannot help but gravitate toward her. There's this magnetic pull that tugs every pair of eyes, every smile, every glare, and every soul toward her and she has no idea. She truly doesn't have a single clue how powerful—how intense she truly is.

"You know," Rory begins, biting down a smile as she toys with the bracelet encircled around her slender wrist.

It is rather sad, really. How amongst this graveyard of countless gravestones and realistically, over half of them are probably people who died due to old age or other causes—basically, what I'm trying to say is that they have been here for long enough for the flowers to welt and life to stain the letters spelling each one's name. But Rory's sister's grave looked beyond aged. If I didn't know any better, I would assume it belonged to someone who died long, long ago.

It has only been three or four years.

"I haven't been here once since she passed." Rory muses, unable to hold eye contact as she digs the heel of her combat boot into the wet grass next to her sister's grave. "It's kind of shit, don't you think? All of this—" she gestures her hands to the space between us and I fight a smile as I watch her ponder. "—Just to end up like that. Either ashes which pollute the ocean, or a pile of bones, six feet below the world that just keeps going."

I snort. It's not funny, though. "It's shit." I admit, peering up at the bland sky that holds almost as little colour and life as I do.

"It is shit." She responds with certainty. "Actually, no." I cock a brow, confused, silently pressing for her to elaborate further. She rolls her brown eyes at my impatience. "It's torture."

I have never lost someone before. Not someone meaningful, anyway. So, it's difficult for me to understand how it feels to lose someone—grief. I don't understand grief but I know from the sound of her heart cracking like glass, that it can be much worse than the mere thought of actually permanently losing someone.

"How is it fair that you can know someone so beautiful. . .so—just loud and there and just—I don't know. . .lovely, I guess? And then one day, they're gone and the world just keeps spinning." Her glassy eyes appear distant and she stares at something over my shoulder and maybe it's nothing but she looks like she has just met grief—living and human, and she's staring it directly in the eyes. "Like there's no them anymore."

And now, her eyes avert dear grief and find mine again and this time, she doesn't look as though she is about to shrink herself to find the middle point where the white of my eyes turn to blue and leap in, swimming forever in my orbs. This time. . .she looks at me like I am grief. I am the human form.

And she's staring me directly in the eyes.

"The concept of existence feels so heavy but it really is so unimportant, isn't it?" I say in a humorous tone, only because it seems so utterly ridiculous that every second that I have spent up until this very one right now has been spent with broken bones and clothes ripped to shreds, every attempt to reach the end, I'm thrown back to the bottom of the well. "My existence weighs no more than that of a feather."