Eternity

Date: June 21st, 8:15 p.m.

Dearest,

There are many things even I do not know about myself. You know me better than I do. Perhaps you can explain why I am writing during this time of day—outside, more or less. I am scratching out these letters slowly on a picnic blanket. It is spread out on the ground, right next to the melted purple ice, which still holds your stars. I arrived on this field just in time to see the sun dip below the horizon, and I wish I know my reasoning.

Date: June 22nd, 8:15 p.m.

Writing to you is a strange coping mechanism. Writing itself is a bizarre concept. What is the point of etching out loopy letters on paper when the ear, mouth, and memory are all attached to one’s body? I do not know, and I am uncertain that you do. But you have told me that I have a way of twisting my words into a story unlike no other. I wish I know if you are bluffing. I cannot stand that my last tribute to you is something you never enjoyed.

Date: June 23rd, 8:16 p.m.

I suppose that the best way of grief is to be ignorant of the inevitability of death and imagine you are only a few miles away, eager to receive my letter and write back to me. It also aids me, choosing the present tense. It gives me the illusion that you are, in fact, still eligible for "are" instead of "were."

Date: June 24th, 8:16 p.m.

 As I am dragging my pencil across the paper at this moment, it is coming to me: While I am sitting here, hearing the ocean and the booming sound of the clubs, you are sitting on the other side of the country, on the peak of a mountain or surrounded by apple trees. You are just a few hundred miles away, alive, waiting for my words.

Date: June 25th, 8:16 p.m.

Remember what our favorite word used to be? Even if we were light-years away, all it would take was to utter that word to find each other again. I whispered it to you instead of the “I love you,” and I made sure to flash you a smile, no matter the size because, you praised me for the way only a corner of my lip lifted, and my eyebrows turned slightly up.

Date: June 26th, 8:16 p.m.

You always tuck my hair behind my ear before doing the same, even when there is nothing to tuck. You would pull a strand from behind before doing it yourself with your nimble fingers. Your hand is as cold as Neptune against my ear, but the loving warmth in your eyes makes up for it.

Date: June 27th, 8:16 p.m.

Oh, sunsets are cruel. In a world of greenery and metal, the sun slowly disappears from one’s line of sight, from the softest pinks to the brightest oranges spreading out in the sky. Despite what it did, gazing at this array of colors today, I cannot help but think of its beauty.

Date: June 28th, 8:16 p.m.

You have names: cosmos, universe, space. Some even call you an infinity. Until the end of time, as the great beyond, you are meant to last forever, something so tantalizingly close but far away, stretching out endlessly. Amazingly, I know so much about you—I know more than any other being. But I do not know your real name. I wonder if you do, yourself.

Date: June 29th, 8:16 p.m.

I cannot pretend to understand the release of permanent demise. Countless amounts of stories are told about it, each showing a different take on this matter. You are gone from this eternity, squashed into a hole of nothingness. To deliver you a letter, telling you that I cannot imagine the presumable pain you are in, frankly, would be true. I still want to be ignorant on this matter, however. I wish to cry no more tears.

Date: June 30th, 8:16 p.m.

Ten days fly by when the only thing one simultaneously looks forward to and dreads is writing a letter under the glow of the sunset and the heat of the summer night. My daily trips around this world—I visited Greece earlier today—are intriguing and unlike any other. But my journeys are as dull as an unsharpened spear, for you are not with me. I wish I can say I am getting better at controlling myself, but my emotions are a chariot pulled by horses—only the most powerful and capable warriors, both in and out, can command them, and I am neither of those things.

Date: July 1st, 8:16 p.m.

I have managed to toss away our last day for long enough. But it gnaws away at my mind, refusing to leave the comfort of me. Scattered thunderstorms have both cursed the weather for a lot of the week, and today, at this time, it has at last come. It seems like the proper way to write everything out: Shielded by a beach umbrella, but the rain still splattering on this notebook; thunder booming and lightning crackling; the sunset invisible in the dark storm clouds. 

Date: July 2nd, 8:16 p.m.

I did not write about that day yesterday, but I long that I had. The sun is in full view today, almost mocking me. Alas, I cannot simply wait around for the next rainy day. Your skin used to be a layer of ultramarine, speckled with golden dots of stars. Your skin used to have constellations, more than any human had known, connecting the seemingly infinite number of stars in the void. Your skin used to be something of another world, fiery meteorites and bright comets racing across it. Your skin used to be beautiful. A start is, no matter how meager, a beginning. 

Date: July 3rd, 8:16 p.m.

You never liked the way it looked, even when we were just kids, out and about, floating through the empty forever of darkness with specks of light. It does not stand out, you had said. When we fell here together, there were shades of almost ivory white to deep brown. No blue. Dots decorate some faces and arms; too much, or too little, like yours. It stands out too much, you had said. There was no balance for you.

Date: July 4th, 8:16 p.m.

You even told me that you would let her change it, take it away, mold it the way she dreamed of, and delight in dissolving it. I could not—and as I am writing, I still can not—imagine you would want it like this. The light leeched your body into a bloodred, dead frame, slowly catching flame. The 13.8 billion years' worth of space itself melted into a dark violet liquid, which pooled on the grass, freezing into purple sheets of ice, despite the scorching air.

Date: July 5th, 8:16 p.m.

Even your gleaming your kaleidoscopic eyes, the same ones I praised and cherished, the same ones that I saw first thing in the morning when I woke up, the same ones I watched blink for a number that even we could not count to, were now shielded by twin wings of fire.

Date: July 6th, 8:16 p.m.

The sun was on the verge of kissing the horizon, grazing right above the line of mountains that marched along as far as the human eye could see. It would be just a few minutes until the aura of the stars and moon in the sky would bless you, but a few minutes was a few minutes too late. The supposed ball of optimism and warmth’s smile was as cold as your blood, its—no, her—glowing scarlet eyes in slits. Her message was as clear as a cloudless day: He wanted, so I delivered.

Date: July 21th, 8:12 p.m.

It has been such a long time since I have opened up this notebook and felt the feathery grass and the scratchy fabric of the blanket under my feet. Thinking about writing further, describing your death while the sun mocks me and the moon pities me seems just as painful as experiencing that day for the first time. I’ve seen this described as a block or a wall, one you have to chip away at it for an excruciating amount of time. But this is more of a hole—I need the rope to get out, but no one is there to toss me one from above. 

Date: August 27th, 7:45 p.m.

Fires shoot up

Date: September 20th, 7:19 p.m.

Your body dissolves

Date: October 29th, 6:41 p.m.

I cry out

Date: November 24th, 5:30 p.m.

The black hole consumes you

Date: December 23rd, 5:36 p.m.

I can not do it. Every day, I sit here and do nothing but stare at the blank lined page, feeling the emotions bubbling up in my stomach like a volcano, ready to erupt. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can repeat that a million, an infinite amount of times, but it would not be enough. It never will be. Even infinity is not enough.

Date: December 24th, 5:37 p.m.

Eternity, my dearest. I wish I can write that word—say that word—smiling, the way you liked it. I wish, wish, wish. That's all I have been writing. I wish something, I don't know something, I dislike something, that's all I have been writing. Eternity, eternity, eternity. We were meant to live together for eternity. I love you for all eternity.