jazzthejester 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔

i'd learn the constellations by name so i could apologize to each one before i pulled the trigger. i'd knock them out of the sky one by one until they landed gently in your hands, still warm from the universe. if you wanted daylight, i'd bargain with the sun until my skin blistered. if you wanted the ocean, i'd spend years carrying it to your doorstep in cupped hands, even if most of it slipped through my fingers before i arrived.

if you wanted rain, i'd wring the clouds out with my own hands. if you wanted spring in the middle of december, i'd convince every sleeping seed that winter had already passed. if you wanted flowers, i'd spend every sunny day of that spring teaching them your name so they'd bloom whenever you walked by. i would teach mountains to bow their heads so you could see over them. i'd ask the moon to come down just low enough for you to touch it without having to stand on your toes. i'd convince gravity to loosen its grip whenever your shoulders grew too heavy. if you wanted forever, i'd spend every tomorrow trying to make it feel a little longer than yesterday. none of it would be easy. i don't think love is supposed to be. i just know that if you looked at the sky and told me you wanted one of its stars, i wouldn't be beside you reminding you how far away they are.

so i stay asleep when i can. because in dreams, you are not a memory. you are not a photograph tucked into a drawer or a name that catches in my throat. you are alive in the way only dreams can make someone alive.

then morning comes.

the alarm rings, or sunlight slips through the blinds, and i open my eyes to a room that has never known you. a room where your voice doesn't echo and your footsteps never reach the hallway.

and for a few terrible seconds, i forget. for a few merciful seconds, i forget.

then i remember all over again. you are still dead. the years have not changed it. the seasons have not changed it. i have grown older, taller, different, and somehow the fact of your absence remains exactly where i left it. waiting for me every morning.

the mind is cruel enough to return them to you for a little while. just long enough to remember what it felt like to have them.

they're ordinary, most of the time. just mornings that don't feel impossible. food that tastes like food. music that sounds like music instead of noise. a future that stretches out in front of me without looking like a threat.

the days i want to be alive are few and far between, but they are still there. i still look forward to them. i look forward to them on the days where maybe it isn't so loud. on days where i can't get out of bed. on days where i can't stomach food. on days where my emotions drown out anything else.

because somewhere ahead of me is a version of the day that doesn't hurt quite so much.

i have spent so much of my life waiting. waiting for phone calls. waiting for people to come home. waiting for grief to loosen its grip around my throat. waiting to become someone who is not haunted by the sound of their own memory.

there are pieces of me that never made it out. pieces of me still sitting in hospital waiting rooms. pieces of me still standing in doorways. pieces of me still believing that if i wait long enough, someone will walk back through them.

they never do. that is the tragedy of it. people leave, and the world continues.

the sun still rises. the dishes still need washing. the seasons keep changing as though nothing important has happened.

and meanwhile, a part of you remains frozen forever in the moment everything fell apart.

i think that is what grief is. not sadness. not really. it is the terrible realization that the world can end for one person and continue for everyone else.

there are days where i miss people so much it feels embarrassing. days where i hear a song and have to sit down. days where i remember something small and ordinary and lose the rest of the week to it.

the exact sound of a laugh. the way someone said my name. a memory so insignificant nobody else would have kept it.

but i kept it. i keep everything. i have always had a good memory. unfortunately, grief does too. the bad days tell me the people i lost are gone forever. the bad days tell me the person i was before them is gone too. they tell me nothing waits ahead except more of the same.

but every now and then, a good day arrives and proves them wrong. and yet the days i want to be alive still come. a song comes on. someone makes me laugh. the sky looks beautiful for no particular reason. the sun hits my windows in just the right way and turns my whole room orange.

for a moment i stop carrying the weight. for a moment i become the person i might have been if none of it had happened.

for a moment, being alive feels less like survival and more like living.

i answer texts. i leave my room. i make plans for next week without feeling foolish for assuming i'll be around to see it.

i catch myself smiling before i remember i'm supposed to be sad. those moments never last. nothing does. but i think that is what makes them precious.

because joy is not special despite its fragility. it is special because of it. the days i want to be alive are few and far between. but they are still there.

and on the days where i cannot get out of bed, on the days where i cannot stomach food, on the days where my emotions drown out anything else, i remind myself of that somewhere ahead of me is music loud enough to shake my ribs. somewhere ahead of me is laughter. somewhere ahead of me is a morning that does not hurt. somewhere ahead of me is a version of this day that hurts less.

perhaps that is enough. just the knowledge that i have been wrong before. that every time i was certain i would never feel light again, another good day eventually arrived.

like a letter from the future. a letter from a version of me i haven't met yet.

it arrives without warning. folded between songs. hidden in ordinary afternoons. slipped beneath the door while i'm busy mourning.

and every time i open it, it says the same thing. you made it here. the music is still loud. the sky is still beautiful. you still laugh at stupid things. you still stop to watch sunsets.

you still have reasons to stay. the future is not as empty as you think.

so on the days where everything hurts, i wait for the next letter.

i hope the fire is gentle. i hope nobody asks them why. because i think they’ve already spent a lifetime answering that question to themselves. i think they’ve already lain awake at three in the morning trying to explain their existence to an empty ceiling. i think they’ve already rehearsed every reason to stay and found themselves unconvinced by all of them. i think they’ve already carried enough guilt to fill a cathedral.

i think that's what breaks my heart. that there are people who carry unbearable things for decades and never once find the words for them. people who become so accustomed to pain that they stop speaking about it altogether. people who learn that if they smile often enough, nobody asks questions.

and eventually nobody notices they're drowning. eventually nobody notices they've gone quiet. eventually nobody notices that every version of their future has started to feel impossibly far away.

sometimes i wonder how many people spent their final years grieving themselves. grieving the person they could have been. grieving the life they almost had. grieving all the futures that slipped through their fingers one ordinary afternoon at a time.

if there is a god, i hope he is kinder than his creation.

i hope he recognizes exhaustion when he sees it. i hope he understands the difference between giving up and simply running out of strength. and i hope, wherever those people end up, nobody asks them to be brave anymore.

maybe at first, i'd tell myself i was only leaving for a little while. just a quick escape, just to see what else is out there. but i know how it would go. the further i flew, the lighter i'd feel. the longer i stayed away, the harder it would be to return. that's usually how towns like this work, right? they hold you tight until you realize you can slip right through their fingers.

i'd weave through storms, let the rain soak through me until i felt clean. i'd shake the weight from my shoulders and let the wind carve me into something new. i'd dive through open air, daring the sky to let me fall just to prove that i wouldn't. i'd fly low over the ocean, my reflection rippling beneath me, close enough to touch but never quite reaching. the world would stretch open below me.

i wonder if anyone would look for me. if they'd stand on rooftops, craning their necks toward the horizon, squinting at every distant shadow and wondering if it was me or just another bird passing through. if they'd call my name like it could carry across miles of sky. if they'd wait.

for a while, maybe they would. i wonder if they'd tell stories about the girl who grew wings.

maybe they'd sit on old porches as the sun melted into the horizon, talking about the kid who used to walk these streets but chose the sky instead. maybe they'd point at distant birds and laugh softly, wondering if one of them was me.

she always dreamed too big for this place, they'd say. always had her head tilted toward the clouds.

maybe my name would become something small and half-magical, spoken only in the quiet moments between conversations. maybe children would make wishes on the wind and imagine i carried them away. maybe when storms rolled in, people would glance toward the darkening sky and think of me weaving through the rain, laughing somewhere beyond the thunder.

but stories don't live forever.

after a while, the porch conversations would stop. the children would grow up. the people who remembered me best would find other things to talk about. my name would lose its edges. the story would soften and blur until it became something uncertain, then something forgotten altogether.

and i think that's alright. i hope the memory of me fades the way morning dew does, without ceremony. i hope my name slips from their tongues without sorrow. i hope they do not carry the weight of me any longer than they have to.

it isn't a tragedy to be forgotten. it isn't a loss. it isn't a wound. it is only the way of things. people fade. stories unravel. echoes quiet until they are nothing at all. the world keeps turning, and i would never ask it to stop for me.