Written

If you love someone, let them go.

My life is in pages—planners, books, graphs, charts. Paper reminds me of the world right before a storm, quiet and heavy with impending chaos, like knowing what will happen before you turn the page.

The delineating lines in my planner are a comfort, a reminder that I have a tomorrow, and a next week, and a next month. Every page is nearly the same, every day in existence because I made it so. I can’t die on Wednesday if I have to fold the laundry, right?

Curves are somehow less formulaic than the lines of my planner. Curves have no definite answer or guarantee. There are exceptions, however. The curvature of the fine print in the novels on my shelves flows in lines: left to right, top to bottom, every page the same. I like the longer ones, the ones that take me sleepless nights and endless days to finish, brimming with gory detail. It’s my imagination, but it’s laid out neatly in front of me–everything happens before I turn the page.

I wish my life were only made of those pages. I wish that numbers and their fickle unpredictability would leave me once and for all. I used to revel in them and the way they could make lines twist and jump. Graphs were artwork and books were boring; there was no adventure in the predetermined. I wish I still thought Icarus was a stupid name for a boy.

Now, the numbers that I loved so dearly tell me that I am going to die. I read about Icarus in the legends; what a valiant life he led.

According to my planner I have two days left, but my hands are too weak to hold a pen. I can feel the cancer in the depths of my mind, crippling my body and infecting everything I touch. My vision is shaded with sickness, and the smell of death lingers in our house. The reaper’s impending presence is crushing.

Still, each second must be written in ink. My hands have developed a tremor and my letters have grown shaky, but maybe, if I plan each breath, I can spend them all with you.

You were flying with me, hand in hand, too close to the sun. You whispered words I had never heard and painted colors I had never seen. I dragged you higher, higher, higher still, until the light was blinding and the heat was white against our skin. We didn’t care, because who was Icarus to us, anyway? I let you guide me, let my blind faith in the mystery of fate weave itself throughout my melting wings, and when it carried us higher, higher, higher still, I laughed into the wind.

It’s funny how faith is as fickle as numbers. My diagnosis pulled us to the depths of the ocean below, and I met your eyes as the water took us both. 

That was the day I knew that fate could not be trusted. I felt my body fold into yours, tears in my eyes and a deep uneasiness in my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The bright fluorescence of the hospital only accentuated the pain with all of its sharp angles and harsh features. I held onto your shirt, clinging to something I knew would soon be gone. I didn’t plan for this to happen–how could I? I didn’t even have a planner, back then. Now, I plan to never let you go.

Catching memories is like holding smoke, and still, every day, I wrote out when you’d hold me until I fell asleep. Your soft assurances did nothing when I felt my bones against my own skin as we swayed to Frank Sinatra in the living room. I slipped from your arms, faster than I ever thought possible. I know you saw it, too, but still, you brought me the planner every morning at eight.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I glance at it. It sits on my bedside table, untouched from earlier. I’m too sick to write, too sick to even reach for it. I want nothing more than to assure myself that I have another week with me, and another week with you. I have laundry to do on Wednesday, tomorrow, but I can’t even sit up in bed. You look over at me with those eyes, the same ones that fell with me to the ocean floor, but you leave the planner as it is and trace my face. I miss the days when your feathered touches made my breath hitch in the back of my throat–when they meant something other than sorrow.

It’s all I can do to blink away the tears. A desperate sense of hopelessness crawls through my chest–I should have planned a little farther ahead. My hands begin to shake as my breathing becomes labored; I have laundry to do tomorrow. I can’t die today.

“It’s okay,” you whisper, placing your hand over mine. You squeeze it gently before lifting it into your lap. “You’ve fought for long enough.” You lean in and press a kiss to my forehead, and somewhere in the back of my feverish haze, I realize that this is all I will have left of you. The ocean has swept me away, and I cannot control the current.

I glance back at the planner—my life is in its pages, but it is also in the pages of the books on my shelves, the numbers and graphs I grew to hate so much, and, most importantly, in you. 

I glance back at the planner, but I leave it behind to meet your eyes one last time. I could never have planned such a death, but oh, my darling, I could never have planned such a life. I will never soar as high, laugh as hard, or love as freely as I did with you. Your eyes are the same ones I met as we flew and as we fell, but if I can write out only one more thing in this life, it is that I will die hand in hand with you.

They say that if you love someone, you have to let them go… and I? I love you.

I think my planner will sit, gathering dust on that bedside table, for the rest of a very long time. There are still pages left, empty between my life and the back cover.

What a shame.