if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another singer.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another feminist-activist.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another queer person.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another voice.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another poet.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another writer.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another witch.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another fighter.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another defender.
if you don't live to tomorrow, the world will lose another veteran.
if you don't live to tomorrow, these things die with you. every piece of you, every fragment that makes you, you. every composite that went into an entity to make you will be gone. these things will no longer exist, not in you, at least. when you die, these things go with you. but your blanket doesn't. your stuffed animals don't. your dolls don't. these small things will stay behind. like a fossil of the dinosaurs, a millennia or two will pass and these things will be stored away into museums displaying not even a fraction of the shine you held while you were living. you think you are the darkness between the stars, but you are one of them. that is why darkness surrounds you. these things will be put away and stored into boxes, given to goodwills and book stores, because without you these things are just lifeless beings, no one is no longer there to breathe life into them. not the one who is supposed to, at least. if you die today, the dolls and stuffed animals that watched you grow up will have to see your body carried out of the door. and it will never come back. not this time.
i think your intent last night was maybe to give me closure. it did not work. i begged you to stay, i begged you not to leave me again, i was on the ground begging for you to stay, at least for a little while. not a single tear left my right eye as i gazed up at you. every tear that has ever been torn from my eyes came out of my left, and if i could have turned that liquid glass red, i would have. i wish i could bathe this world in red, i wish i could have it flowing down these streets, ebbing and flowing like the tides. i wish i could splatter it upon these walls, i wish i could smear it over my face. i wish i could walk this world with bruised knuckles and copper hands, but alas, my blood is not red—it is black.
if i could look at you with the eyes i had when we first met, i would. i wish i could see myself like that again. i wonder how much light would still shimmer there, i wonder how much hope. how much joy, and laughter, and music. i wonder how much blue had resided in my eyes back then. i wonder how much red reside in my eyes now.
you're neon azure eyes slowly turned into an indigo, almost unnoticeable.
and mine? mine flash from a hazy blue to a blood red in seconds, they flash back and forth maybe so, and i'm not sure which. my veins are not purple or green or blue, they are black and i am pale. my freckles stand out like a sore thumb, mocking me like the weeds growing in a sunflower field. although, weeds may be the most beautiful flowers i've ever seen.
i can stab myself right into my chest all i want but for some reason death is fleeting. it mocks me with every breath i take, every move i make. it mocks me when my eyes reluctantly open in the morning with the first heavy sigh i'll take that day. i've lost and i haven't loved but maybe one day we can start anew. maybe in another life we could've been together, maybe in another life we could've conquered the damn world. no, the galaxy. maybe together, we could've lived happily. maybe together, we could've been invincible.
but the sun sets on every story and your chapter has closed, although it went by so fast i believe it was a paragraph. if so, it was the best i'd ever read. i miss you, taylor. the sun reminds me of you in that it burns itself every day to exist, yet still glows and shines to help the lives of others. you told me a few times that i'm the strongest person you know, and i still tear up when i think of that. though i find it funny how you talk about me in the exact opposite way you feel about yourself. we are so much more alike than you believe. darkness is needed to survive just as much as the stars.
