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On a starry night...
I wander silently inside my mind. Portraits on the empty halls, frameless heads on nameless walls watched the world with these eyes, those crazy eyes looking at me and I can't forget, no. In the image of yesterday, I saw a man quite messy in a tattered outfit. This worn man, with his loving eyes looking at me only yesterday, is now on the line between being and not being? I can't make up my mind. Silver thorns in bloody roses and broken lies in freshly fallen snow. That letter that you held while you lay there treacherously... Now I understand what you were trying to tell me and why was your sanity suffering. They didn't listen to you every time you tried to set them free. They didn't listen, they don't listen, they won't listen. They don't know how, but now they'll see. Unfortunately, they will.
It is a starry night, the sky sprinkled with a few brush marks of the god's canvas. The stars are dancing in your pupils and you look at me with that big smile. That's what ordinary summer days are like. This is how the bitter smile of knowing that these will not come true, cracks your lips full of dreams.
"I don't know why are you telling me the big man in which overseas country you're going to be. Are you kidding me when you're already a god in my dreams?"
"This is how... Mikasa, this is how I'm going to paint all my nightmares blue. All my bad feelings will fly away with one move, don't you see? I feel so good. If you let go, I can run a thousand miles, maybe I'll die tonight, who knows? Tell me, Mikasa, who knows I'm alive if I die tonight. What crazy sees and holds my soul while my name is slipping through that thin line of time uncertainly? Hold me, even if I slip out of your hands, and won't let go. Hold me like I'm going to die tomorrow, hold me tighter if I won't die. Know that one day I'm going to slip out of your hands."
I'm looking at you with a ridiculous red of affirmation. I didn't know you felt so blue that day. And now I'm writhing with the shame of the agony of it. I, who was trusting you, with a momentary heedlessness, loosened my hand on the wrist I was holding. You, like a greedy person who took advantage of this opportunity, suddenly and unknowingly slipped out of my hands. Now my hands are empty.
I was looking at you that day when the stars in your emerald eyes were still alive. Now they rule the blacks, whom you greet with a dry smile, with their melting radiance.
You were a vagrant, to a degree that not every young person can afford. On the starry nights, you were a vagrant, swayed by the dawn as you made love to the sky on the roof you climbed and talked about your dreams that didn't come true. I was your trouble partner, your eternal 'friend', the person who latches your life that you don't even know the value of.
Whereas, one of those nights, I wanted to be more than a friend in those eyes. Ah, could I really be?
Do you remember? I ask because I think maybe you haven't gone yet. Do you remember the sun that was enough to illuminate our hopeful faces with a single touch on one of those starry nights? That hope would give life to us too? Could we root and promise not to leave forever? Just like that tree, you loved to sleep at the bottom of when we were little? I would always come to the blanket to cover you so that you wouldn't catch a cold. You really tired me out when we were little.
On that starry night, you paint your palette blue. Here I see it. You draw blue clouds on your canvas like it was just yesterday. I say add a little gray and I find the blues quite nice. I'm only now realizing that this painting is meant to hide feelings, even though it was drawn just to make it look good for me back then. How naive I was, when I thought, no one knew you better than me, I was fooled by your playful smile. Damn Eren, I wasn't prepared for the worst because I was afraid of leaving you
Just the other day, while we were watching the clouds from the small window in my room, I thought, summer was hitting our eyes. Maybe my eyes weren't enough to see the darkness you hide with the shadows above you. If you would paint me with a pencil on that starry night, we would suddenly get lost in your eyes. Because you didn't even see us. I was sure from that day that you wanted to go. I was deceiving myself in the night with the elegant breeze blowing on my face. "Winter is coming, Mikasa, it can't go. It does not like cold weather and cold trips. It loves starry nights and cannot let them go until they fall one by one from the sky." You had a beautiful smile that night when the madness was reflected in your eyes.
However, I did not know that the cold was not a joke. I did not that it will never leave us alone after its arrival.
Now I understand, what you were trying to tell me, why were your sparkling eyes screaming for help, why was your heart beating in pain, and why your suffering sanity was ruined from enduring and you found the solution in flying. That night all your thoughts flew so you made this decision. You didn't just kill yourself, unfortunately, you won't know anymore.
Starry nights, Eren. The starry nights when we met. Indispensable for our summer days. Now I'm sitting here alone. On the roof of that old house. I bought some blue flowers for you. I burn them softly. Let them go to you, smell them as much as you want. If only the sky were covered with clouds, maybe I wouldn't be in agony.
You thought you had no one, Eren. You made the mistake of mistaking the world for just a lonely ship. You didn't believe in yourself. Then why did you commit the sin of being such a good person?
While burying you on that snowy day, the wheat fields you loved so much had turned amber. You loved to run among them. Didn't you? You used to kick the white snow off them viciously and tell them to stay as they used to be. Now there is no Eren to clean them up, and there is no Mikasa to stay as she was.
Tired faces, all the village people already miss your face. They take one last look before burying you. Now I understand what you wanted to tell me. What a deep mark that man left in my heart, who didn't even find himself worthy of being loved. I still think with great dread of your death, your pale face, and your closed eyes. I consoled myself by saying that you were just asleep, that you would wake up to see me again, so I would see again that unique color shining in the sunlight.
That night, when your sanity was dying, when you did not leave a single hope in the landscape with the brush you deceived with the lies of hope. On this starry night, when the snow was just starting to fall without even saying goodbye to summer, you took your life without thinking, when you hopelessly darkened my canvas. Now I can only draw the night.
The piece of paper that you always carried in your pocket, gains more meaning now. You killed not only you but also my stars. You are the murderer. As if that weren't enough, you were exhibited like it was ingenuity in the church. We buried you as if praising what you did.
Now I understand what you always wanted to tell me, why your sanity suffered so much. Maybe the world wasn't cruel, but it was obvious that you were cruel. You loved me against your lovelessly written destiny, you let me and perhaps a dozen others love you too... Whereas you were a worthless vagrant to yourself, that's what you wrote in that shabby letter.
I was surprised by this, I wrote the stars with longing and burned them in the fire of the fireplace so that they could go to you. I've found myself burning a lot of stuff these days, hoping they went to you. Now I'm too tired, I'm trying to hold on to life.
If I could, Eren, I hoped to be able to say, even if you didn't give me that right, that this world is not as beautiful as you. You were cruel, but you were still so beautiful that I would long for it every day.
I wanted to escape. Far away... Very far away. From you, but mostly from myself... But neither you nor I were there... I raised the broken glass in my hand to love and to the time that passed by without my permission. Very far away... By myself, Under that starry night.
Today, Armin has stopped fighting against his illness after 3 years. He lost. I'm starting to be a little more lonely today, right? He's with you now, isn't he? Should I hate you two for stealing my colors from my life, which already started to fade every day? Can I hate you for forcing me to be the only one left of our childhood memories?..
I'll wait for days to pass thinking you're happy. I will be stubbornly happy with you, thinking that you are happy without me. If one day I can meet you, you will pay for it. Until that day, I will try to find you by reading that old letter.
Thank you, Eren, for being my youth, my love, my most beloved, my dearest. Thank you for always being by my side.
❝Whenever you feel alone, look at the sky. Our loneliness is under the same sky. I mean, don't be afraid to close your eyes in the dark night, I'm always by your side.❞