# The Life Wrapped in Dust / One The mornings had a particular quality to them—that peculiar heaviness that settles when the night hasn't truly left, when darkness still clings to the edges of things. Somnath would wake before the others, in that suspended hour before the world declared itself awake or asleep, and move through the house like a man crossing a threshold he couldn't see. The window beside his bed faced the lane. In summer, the dust rose from the street in slow, deliberate spirals, as if the earth itself were breathing. He would watch it accumulate on the sill—layer upon layer, year upon year—the residue of a life that went on without asking permission, without seeking his consent. Sometimes he would run his finger across the glass and draw in it, childish marks that vanished by afternoon, or stayed, depending on the rain. His wife had stopped commenting on it long ago. She had a way of moving past things, both literal and otherwise. The dust, his silences, the slow calcification of their days into something neither bitter nor sweet—merely solid, merely there. Like the furniture they'd inherited from her mother. Like the clock that had stopped years ago but still occupied the mantelpiece. Somnath had worked at the same office for thirty-two years. The number had a weight to it, like a stone in his pocket. Thirty-two years of ascending three flights of stairs, of sitting at a desk by the eastern window where the morning sun would eventually burn through the frosted glass. He had watched the city transform itself beyond that window—new buildings rising like ambitions, old ones crumbling into memory. But the office itself remained unchanged, as if time had made an exception for it. His colleagues had retired one by one. Some of them had written him letters. Others had simply ceased to exist, at least in the geography of his days. He had attended the funeral of Mrinal Babu three years ago—a man who had sat two desks over, whose laugh had a particular bark to it that Somnath had grown accustomed to, the way one grows accustomed to the sound of rain. At the cremation, Somnath had stood to the side, holding a flower no one had asked him to hold, thinking about how little he actually knew of Mrinal Babu's life outside those hours, outside that office. That night, he had asked his wife about Mrinal's wife—whether they had stayed in touch, whether she was managing. His wife had looked at him oddly, the way she sometimes did, and said she didn't know. They hadn't spoken since his retirement party. The house had five rooms. They occupied three of them regularly. The others had long since filled with the accumulated debris of living—boxes of papers no one would ever read again, clothes that no longer fit, objects whose original purpose had dissolved into obscurity. His daughter had taken what she needed when she married and moved to Bangalore. That had been four years ago. She called on Sundays, or most Sundays. The conversations followed a pattern, comfortable in the way all patterns are comfortable, because they require nothing new. Somnath had built no monuments. He had written no books, composed no symphonies, fathered no revolutionary thoughts. He had simply been present for his portion of time, showing up, doing what was asked, watching the dust gather. If this constituted a life, then he had lived one. If it constituted something less, then he was unaware of it. The strange thing was that he did not suffer. He did not wake with despair. He did not rage against the dying of the light, as the poet had suggested one ought to do. Instead, he moved through his days with the quiet acceptance of a man who has made peace with the fundamental ordinariness of his existence. Or perhaps—and this was a thought he sometimes had, usually in the hour before sleep—he had simply mistaken numbness for peace. The distinction seemed increasingly difficult to discern. His wife called from the kitchen. Breakfast was ready. He rose from the bed, his knees making their familiar protest, and went to join her. The dust would gather again on the sill. It always did. There was no fighting it. There was only the daily ritual of noticing it, sometimes wiping it away, and then, inevitably, letting it accumulate once more. This was how a life was lived. This was the texture of it. Dust and habit and the slow, unspectacular passage of years.

All the quarrels of a lifetime, every misunderstanding between us—I've lived through them all. There's nothing left now. No resentment, no expectation, no hope of any kind. I knew well enough that you can't wring love from someone by force or coercion—that much I understood! Perhaps it was only hard to accept, because I believed that since I loved, I had a right to that love, and trading on that right, I suppose I cast you again and again into unbearable suffering. But for every measure of pain I inflicted on you, I've endured a hundred times over in every waking moment—something you'll never know. Now I can't meet my own eyes in the mirror when I remember how I treated you. I presented to you a self that wasn't myself at all. I ran like a hare in frantic flight, so senseless in my rushing that I forgot which direction I was even heading.

At last I came to stillness. Now I'm well; the fever has broken, and somewhere in between, something vast was lost. And now it strikes me: this person I've made so important, this person I've unwittingly taken so completely into myself—does she even think about me with any real clarity? There was no answer from within, yet I felt shame before the weight of my own expectations of her. Why do I want her? I'm forcing her to live in the light of my thoughts, she who doesn't want me, or perhaps doesn't even see me as I am. And so many times it's come to me: either I've simply fallen in love with her, or my attention toward her runs too deep—but why did I have to speak it aloud? I could have kept this love locked away and lived out my entire life in a kind of peace! Couldn't I? At the very least, I wouldn't have had to be so harsh, so false, so reckless before her. Then at least I could have looked myself in the eye in the mirror. I wouldn't have felt so base and graceless in my own sight. However she thinks of me, whoever she is or isn't, I could still have told myself, from a distance, that she knows nothing of what moves within me—and found some comfort in that.

But now? Now everything has turned to chaos, the kind that might not resolve in a lifetime. And yet I think: how easily one forgives the person one loves, forgetting everything, gathering them close to one's heart again! Does that mean I was nothing like that to her? Was I truly nothing in her life? Or were those things she said about me merely words—empty air? Did I deceive myself, mistaking falsehood for truth and accepting it as real? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Now, when I cannot understand something, when the world seems opaque and unknowable, I no longer seek answers. Let those mysteries remain mysteries; perhaps I'll never find the answers anyway. So many things we never get in this life. But I must hold fast to my vow—to keep the person I've accepted into my heart for all my days. I cannot deny them in any way. Because in the end, I might deceive anyone else, but myself? Once the heart has claimed someone, I have neither the taste nor the capacity to think of another in their place. And even if they refuse me, there is no path left for me to abandon them.

Many people live by lies, perhaps they must. Many spend their entire lives propping up a falsehood as truth, mastering it through pretense, bending to it or bending it, living out their days against the grain of their own hearts—but how can I do this? How can I live this way and still meet my own eyes? What answer can I give myself? How can I hide from myself? I have always wanted a simple life. Is this it, then—fleeing from my own self? Playing the greatest game of hide-and-seek with myself? Is a simple life one where I must live thinking of myself as my own worst enemy? Life has never shown me such a face before. Why now? I am what I am to myself; and what I am not, why must I pretend to be? Why do I run from myself? I cannot deceive myself, just as I cannot deceive another. When did I come to believe that what is right must always bring happiness? Truth brings pain and yet it is truth. Sooner or later, we must accept truth in the end!

I don't know when I began to walk against myself, trying to free myself from difficult paths, denying the experiences of my own life. Either that, or I lack the strength within to honor love—that sacred truth—with the dignity it deserves. Perhaps I don't even want to fight this fight. The strangest part is that I've started calling respect for my own love a battle! No matter how hard a person tries, they can never hide their true self from themselves, never conceal the truth from their own eyes. Most people, perhaps, spend every moment running from themselves, fleeing the house of their true nature. This can never be an easy life. Whatever ease exists, I must carry it within myself. Let it be painful, let it be a path of fire—still, by day's end, I will have answers to my thousand questions, enough to give to myself. I won't have to lie, won't have to pretend to anyone that I am a deeply happy person. I'll never have to falsely tell someone I'm doing fine, caring with hollow words. Rather, let people see me and feel compelled to think: *Yes, they are doing quite well.* I accepted my life as a game long ago—so when did I suddenly begin to see it as a battle?

I remembered your birthday very well, but I deliberately didn't text you. What would be the point? I knew you weren't waiting for a text from me either. Why would you? You couldn't even bear to have me steal away your joyful moments on that special day with my presence. So I didn't. Besides, I've never really been able to do anything for you, so sending a simple birthday message doesn't sit right with me. Now I've stopped texting you altogether. Even when it hurts, I don't text anymore. My greatest effort will be not to bother you. I know the unease I've caused you—I hope you've forgotten it. I know you never will remember it anyway. I try each day anew to forget it myself, and I'll keep trying, but forgetting won't come. This very effort of mine will keep me from ever forgetting.

Look, who said that because I'm trying to forget, I actually want to forget? What I want is to weave you into myself anew each day, right here in the midst of this struggle. It's easier to keep you alive within me than to cut you away. What are you doing now? Writing every day? Swamped with work? I'm sure you're doing well? Anyone who takes such pains with wellness must certainly be well, at least in that sense. And I'm no longer trapped in the debt of a false love. Hard as it is to accept—impossible as it seems—I've come to know that what you mean by love, what you understand by it, isn't what I understand or imagine. So perhaps somewhere we both love each other, the two of us, but our conceptions don't align. Love demands more than just loving; you have to keep some of it for yourself. And because you knew this, because you kept your own intact and gave only what you could spare for me, perhaps even that—even if I gave you all of mine—isn't enough for us to be together.

But don't think that because I don't text you every day, I've stopped talking to you. I talk to you far more now than before—in the gaps between work, in moments of quiet. Perhaps it never reaches your heart, but I speak nonetheless. And I'll keep speaking. Silence is only the stopping of words, not of mind or thought. To still you in my mind, I'd have to still myself, and to still myself, I'd have to stop this breath, this living—and that's beyond my strength. So I've chosen a medium for us, a way to speak. It's better this way—I haven't burdened you, you don't even know, and yet I've told you everything. Though nothing can truly be told to anyone. Even when you want to, there's no one there to listen. And you know this: those for whom no one listens, their truest companion is only themselves. We can lighten ourselves by sharing so much with our own heart, and when we write it down, even better—what came to mind, what I thought, it no longer buzzes and circles endlessly in this skull.

Tell me, how do you pass your time? Of course you have no leisure to speak of, but I do. I have so many idle moments in which to talk to you, to write you letters, to lodge my grievances about you at your own door. And I love all of it—it makes me feel you are mine. Sometimes, when I have time, I listen to your old recordings. Some of them cut deep when I hear them again. I wonder how someone can be so harsh with the person they love. Then I think, perhaps you were always like that, or perhaps I was wrong in so many ways. Perhaps you disliked so much about me, but you never said.

You know, I've become alone again these days. I don't want to be alone, don't want to stay this way, but perhaps the Creator loves to see me like this—for even surrounded by people, I find no joy in talking to anyone, in spending time with them. I'm searching for something to do. There's only one thing to do now: study, study, and study again. And beyond that, whenever I find a moment, there's writing to you, talking with you, or watching videos on YouTube. I'm exhausted now; I'll talk after resting, rest a while, then get back to my books. Take care of yourself.

How people can truly lie—you understand this listening to your words. Yesterday I missed you so much, wanted to sit with you awhile, wanted to hear your voice. But it can't happen now, so I was listening to our old conversations, over and over, and each time I was astonished. Each time I thought: how can a person lie so sincerely, day after day, month after month? That's what you did with me. You tried to make a fabricated lie seem true through sheer repetition. What hurts is that you never learned to say the truth to my face, even now. You didn't have the strength truth demands, or perhaps you never wanted to face that truth—and so day after day you lied and whispered "I love you" in my ear. I believed you. Never did a question arise in my heart, never a doubt about your love. When two souls bind together, not every word needs to be spoken. Between them an inner path forms, and through that path the hearts commune without hindrance, so that nothing one feels remains unknown to the other.

You never carved a path into me, so you never truly knew what lay inside. You only listened to the words on my lips, and decided everything based on that. Why did you never think to ask what lived in my depths? What I actually wanted? Because you were indifferent to me, to every part of me. Everything you said was only surface-deep—I held no real place in your inner world. There was no love between us, not truly. A person who loves cannot erase everything so quickly, can never do it. I too have tried endlessly not to think of you, but I couldn't forget—not for a single moment in all these days. So how are you managing? Didn't it once occur to you, even once, that you should come back to me? You never came back because you never wanted to lower that proud head of yours. Had you returned to me willingly, you would have had to bow down, you would have had to accept me against your own will. Where you never wanted me, what question is there of bowing? A person bows only where they wish to stay, where they want to hold on. I wanted to hold on to you—I bowed, I bowed so many times—yet you never returned, because you didn't want to, because you never wanted love. You didn't want to be tangled up with a madwoman, with an arrogant, careless, chaotic girl, so you sought your freedom, so for you peace came before everything, before love itself. To you, my actions seemed like unrest, when to someone who loves, everything about the beloved is acceptable, everything pleases them, everything they willingly embrace. Isn't that so?

Was what we had truly love? Were there no sides of you I disliked? Of course there were. Just because I loved you didn't mean I had to like everything about you—that's not how it works. Yet to accept you despite that, to bow before you, to bear with you… I never felt the pain of it! I had my grievances, but I never left you, never fell silent in a way that would hurt you without speaking, and yet where you once promised me a lifetime, you forgot that promise so quickly! What is the difference between you and those people who forget everything in a rush and manage just fine? Whose beloved dies, yet they still find reasons to live well—but what of those whose beloved must live in this world beside them, forced to accept that 'the one I love is no longer mine'? How do they pass their days? Perhaps you will know someday. A heart can break and still love only one person—but breaking countless times to love countless people is impossible, because my love for you is not finished yet, and I pray it never will be.

As long as I live, I cannot erase these memories, and so I cannot become anyone else. To be someone else, you must know how to completely withdraw yourself from where you were, a skill I simply do not possess. Perhaps this makes me look like an emotional, foolish girl in everyone's eyes, but I can never deny myself. Let them all call me a loser instead. And whatever else—losers like me never separate themselves from themselves. I'm saying this because one day you told me, 'Girls like you don't need someone to love; they only need the grave of the person they love, where they can express their sorrow every day.' Those words were so painful to swallow! I couldn't make you understand anything that day either, but you've never bothered to read the mind of someone whose words have no value for you—I know that too. Your words have pierced me like arrows countless times, and yet I still waited eagerly for what you would say next. There was never anything much in what you said—just words, bare words—and still I can't explain why I waited day after day to hear you speak.

What was I hoping to hear from you? You never spoke words of comfort or emotion, never softened toward me. Most of the time your words only explained the distance between us, or else you avoided all that talk of love altogether. And yet I searched for your affection within those careless, harsh words, deceived myself with false hope, a place where there was never anything for me at all. I dishonored my own love this way. Better to love from a distance, one-sided, where at least that love demands nothing, asks for no mercy, requires no tolerance of neglect. You can hold no grudge against that person, make no claims in exchange for your love, feel no fear that your love will be scorned, find no reason to blame them. Every time I close my eyes, that person appears before me and hurls a thousand sharp questions at me. That person, whatever else they may be, does not know what love is.

Close your eyes and no one appears before them anymore. If love were born merely from the body's pull, the very word love would vanish from the earth—for the soul dwells far beyond the flesh. Once a person discovers their own soul, it becomes impossible to bind them to bodily servitude. Love is that which rises above the body and tangles itself with the soul. Even one who doesn't know what a soul is, even if he remains enslaved to his own body, finds it utterly impossible to give even this small frame to anyone but the one he loves. What have I sought all these years, and what have I found—or if what I found cannot be called finding, then why did I find it this way? I know nothing of all this. Now it seems to me that those who spent a whole life quarreling with the one they loved, who never knew even a moment's peace together, and those for whom peaceful moments with the beloved come like dewdrops at dawn—many of them too are happy, many of them too have received something from life. To receive everything is good, or to lose everything is good; but a love suspended between gaining and not-gaining, riddled with doubt, renders all meaning meaningless in life.

It is a great, great happiness to sit face to face with the one you love and be able to say "I love you" or "I hate you." There is a kind of understanding even in not-having, and one can move forward carrying that burden. But the agony of dragging an half-dead life cannot be shown to anyone. In such a life, time pierces like a thorn in every moment—a thorn so sharp that you cannot swallow it if you try, yet pulling it out means destroying yourself.

Will you take me? Will you give me some small place with you? I have nowhere else to go but you! Where shall I go? In this world, to whom shall I go but you? Is there no room for me even with you? I don't torment you anymore, I don't even say these things to you now. I know that saying them won't help if you don't want it yourself. I still cannot be without you, yet I remain. I remain because there is no other way. You won't have me, and I don't want to go anywhere else. From within, again and again I'm held back, as if someone whispers—where will you go? And if you go there, will your heart settle? After hearing all this, suddenly another voice speaks up—it's better to be alone than to spend a whole life enduring death's agony with someone you don't love or could never love. To live in pretense with someone your heart cannot truly accept—that too is unbearable for me. So I stay alone instead, and this is fine. Now my heart doesn't pull toward anyone else, and I don't even try. The mind, after all, bows to no one's force, doesn't it?

I don't know when I began to accept you, piece by piece, into the depths of myself. I only know this now: I can no longer deceive myself, no longer twist the truth to make myself believe in false happiness. I won't force myself into a lie anymore. Wherever my heart wants to go, that is where I will go. I will do what my inner self demands. You cannot truly live by betraying yourself. You stopped speaking to me, and I have had to accept it, because I have no claim over you. But I too cannot turn away—I am bound by my own heart.

There is a question that has haunted me countless times, yet I have never found it reflected in reality. Tell me: did you ever truly love me? If you did, why was there never time for me? Why always this show of busyness? What were you afraid of in speaking with me? If you loved me, did my questions ever feel like interrogation to you? I never asked for explanations from you. I know you answer to no one for anything, and you never will answer to me. But I wished—how I wished—that you would at least not let doubt creep into my heart. If you had received my questions not as accusation but as longing, as simply wanting to know how much you loved me, perhaps then you could have opened yourself, just a little, and told me what was truly in your heart. I never doubted you. I only wanted you to care, even a little. It seemed to me that nothing about me mattered to you at all. Your careless indifference, that cold detachment toward everything I was, wounded me again and again. I may have accepted it, but a thousand questions gathered inside me like an army, attacking from within.

I could not help but ask you things, though I knew you would never follow anyone's lead. I never expected you to. I only wanted to see how your love for me would show itself. But I never understood what lay beneath your surface, what you truly felt for me. You never let anything slip—not in how you treated me, not in a single word. I have given you thousands of words, but you have never given me one willingly. I cannot make the numbers add up, you see. You love me, yet you have no time for me. You pay no attention to who I am. What kind of love is this? I am not even near you, so how can I know you? And you won't let me understand you either. So what am I supposed to grasp? Yet you blame me for everything! And I accept even that! And still you remain absent from me. I don't know what you want. Why can't I understand you? Have I failed to truly become yours? Have I never loved you the way love demands to be loved? Did I not even try to know your heart? How can I understand what you want if you never show me? Did I not attempt? Was I powerless? And yet—I wanted so desperately to find a way.

You tell me I talk too much when I speak. And yet in this whole world, there is no one—no one but you—to whom I have ever spoken so freely. I have no one to talk to. I thought you were mine, so I could tell you everything. But then I saw that when I speak too much, you grow afraid. You think perhaps I've gone mad. Yet you never once considered that a person like me has no one in this world worth talking to. Where is someone so alone inside supposed to go to find a voice? I've stopped talking to you now, freed you from my needless burden. You used to answer my words with such sharp replies, yet you never truly tried to understand me. I asked you countless questions, shared so many thoughts with you, and yet I never received a single answer. I didn't want you to misunderstand me—I wanted your response, but perhaps you had nothing to say then, and certainly you have nothing now.

Sometimes I think my loneliness, my lack of anyone to speak to—perhaps I simply cannot accept it. That's why I keep seeking time and affection from everyone else. But that would be wrong to say. Only from you. I feel no urgency to talk with others, never have. It seems pointless to speak about anything with someone who doesn't understand you. I've never found a person worth talking to, someone I could actually speak with. So I've always remained silent, as I am now. When you came, the more I came to know you, the more I made you my own. That's why it never felt hard to bother you all the time, never felt like I couldn't. But my expectation was of you. I expected you to speak with me too, to share your life with me. But perhaps you have nothing to tell me at all. I've cast aside all my hopes now. Perhaps knowing will be enough. I expect nothing from anyone anymore, except from myself. To live in this world, I can say with some certainty, I don't need anyone else. I don't understand people, though I try to. Perhaps I manage a little of it. Perhaps I fail at most of it.

Now I've made myself my only companion in conversation. There's one advantage to it: I no longer expect anything from anyone. Whether someone speaks well of me or ill, it changes nothing. Nothing anyone says affects me anymore. Every word leaves me undisturbed. The turbulence inside has finally ceased. As far as I can tell, if I could live this way, life wouldn't be so bad. But I can no longer recognize myself. You know, I was terribly restless as a child? No one could keep me confined at home, even by force. I'd wander outside all day like a duck or a chicken, constantly on the move. I'm not like that anymore. But with each passing day, my world grows smaller and smaller. Now when I say "I and I," it's just me. When I say "mine," it's only me. I was never a homebody, never someone who wanted to be alone, but now I don't wish to be with anyone. I've become detached somehow—I never wanted this, yet here I am. I feel like a stranger to myself. Even if I wanted to, I can't seem to open myself up to anyone anymore, and truth be told, I don't want to. Is it really true that circumstances quietly transform a person this way, without their consent?

Why am I so emotional? Why can't I keep my feelings in check? Why do I think with so much emotion? Other ordinary people around me—they see everything simply, naturally. I want that too. I want a simple, ordinary life like theirs. So why can't I be like them? Why am I the way I am? Why is my nature so difficult? Sometimes I think if I could just open my skull and set my brain aside, perhaps I could live an easier life. But that's not possible, is it? Or what would I have to do for the people around me to take me more lightly? Or why, when you all see me, do you expect that I was born only to understand everything, always? Why does it hurt you to accept my mistakes as mistakes? I'm human too! Am I some angel? Why do you expect me to be flawless? Why do you expect me to be mindful of everything? Why do you want me to become what you think I should be? Being myself—that's my greatest crime.

A person born with the burden of understanding everything—perhaps there isn't even one soul in this world who truly understands them, is there? I have to understand myself, and I have to understand all of you too. In short, I can make no mistakes. I must be faultless, perfect. Think about it for a moment—in this version of me, how much of the real me do you actually get? I can't do it. I can't understand any of you. Me first, and then you. I will live as I wish, with or without your support. I will always be there for myself. Even if you, or none of you, stand by me, still I will be myself, alone and whole.

I hope you are well. That you are well is clear enough. You couldn't be otherwise, having left me behind; you're content, so perhaps I don't cross your mind anymore, or you're managing splendidly without me—stay as you are. What you say is true—nobody is indispensable to anybody. If only I could understand that, what a fool I would cease to be! I've made you the sole support of my life, though there is no thread binding us, no claim I can stake on you. You simply are, but from a distance. The farthest distance of all. Today, after so long, we quarreled. Tonight I will sleep. Sleep deeply, for hours. So many nights have passed without sleep. Perhaps when I close my eyes, you won't appear before them. You must be tired too, listening to me all this while.

You filled that emptiness in my life—the one every person senses from birth, and some carry with them until death's threshold. A person searches their whole life for that one person, that singular soul with whom it would feel: this one alone is enough for an entire lifetime. But how many find such a person? How many have the patience to wait for someone like that? From the day you first entered my life until now, your presence has held me in its spell so completely that even a whole lifetime passing wouldn't break this sleep, this slumber that won't leave me. Moment by moment, I feel you in every instant of mine. I cannot say whether these feelings were always this way from the beginning. But you were there. I didn't understand what this was, why I was so enchanted by you—I didn't know—yet you always made me aware of your presence. I was distracted, so I didn't always feel it; it took me so long to grasp that you were there, that you exist within me. Day after day, moment after moment, you appeared and reappeared in my awareness, yet I mistook you for a mirage. Now I have not the slightest hesitation in yielding myself to you. I don't know why it is so.

When I am alone in my room, I do not feel utterly forsaken in this world, for I cannot shake you from my thoughts, cannot deny you across the whole of my being. You may not be here in flesh, but I feel your presence in my existence, your touch still upon my body and mind like a single white flower, luminous and pure. That one soul can so completely overturn another, that one person's existence can so thoroughly eclipse another's—when these thoughts visit me, I am astonished anew each time I turn my gaze inward. I never knew what love was. That I love you—even that was unknown to me. Only after feeling you did I first understand what love means. I was never this emotional, and the more I look at myself now, the more I appear to myself as a stranger. When did I become this way? When did my mind and spirit shift so completely? I do not know. I was not meant to be this. I am not this kind of woman. The woman I believed myself to be bears no resemblance to who I am now.

It has been so long since we last spoke, yet you remain an undeniable truth within me, inseparable from myself—these past years I have not been able to separate you. But that I was so consumed by you, so engulfed in you—all of this is a stranger to me. Like two sides of a coin, I am. That a woman like me would ever stretch out her hand for love, would bow her head for any man—it is unbelievable. Perhaps I am not beautiful, but I am still a woman! Women need never beg for love, for affection. Even the plainest girl has a hundred suitors. In matters of love I have always been recklessly careless. It goes without saying that I never displayed anything particularly feminine. This person I am now—I no longer recognize her. The woman I have become is nothing like the woman I was. This new self of mine has a desperate wish: to fall at your feet, press my palms together, and plead, 'Please, do not cast me away!'

Sometimes in the deep of night, seeing you online sends a jolt through my chest. My mind keeps sounding warning bells. Who is he talking to, this late? Has someone new entered his life? What does this new person have that I lack? That person has certainly brought endless strength and capability to keep you at peace! That person must be someone truly special, utterly exceptional. What I could not do with all my love, he seems to be doing effortlessly. How could anyone be greater, more special than this?

I could not do it. Not after all this. I could not leave you, could not sever myself from you and be free. You may scorn me, despise me, kick me aside, cast me out, strangle the breath from me—still, I cannot go. The net in which I am caught can be undone by nothing but death itself, by nothing and no one else. In these days that remain to me, I wish only to live—carrying your memory, your thoughts, your feelings—holding them within me like breath itself.