Crickets chirped into the night, stars glimmering in the black sky.

“I just want to go home. I’ve never been so broken and alone as I am right now …” Her voice trailed off into the wind. “Please, just take me back home …“

But now we’ve passed into the veil of darkness. We make Time twist our world into a macabre visage. Gone are the days of the firefly, of diamonds in the winter sky.

“And I do wonder,” she said, “if I will live to know of the last polar bear to sink into the sea, drowning in the Arctic waters, if I will gaze upon the sunset of this civilisation. I wonder, indeed …”

Sometimes I miss you, though I’ll never say it to your face. You say you’re leaving, moving away. I nod and turn my head.

I hope you find happiness out there — I wish you the best. I hope the unease in your heart settles, that your demons are burned away.

I keep my scepticisms to myself. They have no place here, right now, marring the end of our days together.

I force a smile as I sit up, greeting the morning with a private aubade in my mind.

Once upon a time, we were in the dark. So it began. And we found light, we raced with it, danced with it, lived in it. But as it began, so it ends.

In the dark.

You can locate them here.

but now we must pack up every piece
of the life we used to love
just to keep ourselves
at least enough to carry on …

- Neutral Milk Hotel, “Holland 1945″

I find there’s an excitement brewing deep down as I quietly peek through the cracks at it with a childish curiosity, quietly contemplating to myself what it could all mean. The days start sliding by so fast with the force of an avalanche, racing to that point in time where the line takes a sharp turn off into another horizon.

And I must not — I cannot — hold on to the past, even though those days are now wrapped in a hazy, warm blanket of nostalgia. They’ve created yearnings, pinings, wishful thinkings for what once was. Regret is in the desire for change, the need for solace, the memorisation of the thousand “what-ifs” that plague your dreams when you sleep. And remorse? Regret that bored a hole through the heart, manifested into the soul.

How can it be that these things live in me? The girl who lived with no regrets, now in the heaving waves of a remorseful sea.

But I will remember this partially as the summer where I had one magnificent day with you, and even if it comes that this was our only day together for the rest of our lives, I’ll cherish it always.

And still I just can’t help but feel it wasn’t enough …

Nothing ever is.

Because you know better than anyone, Rowan, just how easily things don’t work the way you plan.

And so I do. And yet … And yet …

I still can’t help but dream.

I marvel at the tension that grows in my chest when I think about it, the flipping, twisting, turning sensation that flutters and writhes in my stomach. My rationale says this is nervousness.

I am bloody nervous. So nervous it makes me tremble.

And yet, the realisation still hasn’t fully sunk in that in five days I’ll be seeing you. You’ll become a tangible, touchable reality in only five days.

I hope it all goes beautifully. I hope we get along splendidly.

But most of all …

I hope you like me. Like me? No. More than just like me.

I hope you think I’m wonderful, beautiful, splendid.

I know not the state my heart will be in, in just five days …

But I can’t. The numbers and words come crashing through my mind with tsunami-like force.

I feel so small against these emotions, these magnanimous feelings (for you).

And if you didn’t realise it, I’m made of moth wings and glass.

I break ever-so-easily.

Please handle me with care.