a summer child's winter heart;

She is the stars to your night sky, and I am the black void behind those stars. I always thought  the ghost of her was following us, I was wrong — I was the ghost all this time.

She’s on a hiatus. Let her rest. Don’t bother her. Don’t be so foolish as to think that she’s done. She’s only getting started. There is much more to come. Let her be. She will be ready when she’s ready.

Call me at 4am. Wake me up. I don’t care, I just want to hear your voice. Tell me about the bad dream you had, tell me why you can’t fall asleep. Tell me why you prefer to talk at night, or why the words only come spilling from your mouth when you think no one is listening. I am here. I will listen to you when your shoulders feel heavy; I will hear your words when you feel so crushingly small. I will sit with you in silence when you are slumped against your pillow. I know your sadness is not beautiful, I know it is overwhelming and destructive and ugly. I know you feel powerless and redundant. So call me at 4am. I prefer you over sleep any day. Don’t sit there on your own. Talk to me. I love you and I care.

We all have old versions of ourselves. Do you see yourself the same way as last year, last month, or even last week? I do not. I talk to people so easily these days, I stand where I once crumbled just at a touch last year. I do not cry when my father raises his voice like I did a few months ago. I compliment a girl I could not talk to last week. Constantly, we are changing, growing, fluctuating. This is how I know we have many soulmates. Maybe you met yours when you were as young as eight or as old as seventy-eight. Either way, we have a soulmate of every version of ourselves. You loved an old version of me. You can keep her. I do not want that version of myself back ever again.