Work Text:
I.
I don’t want to jinx it, but think I’ve finally managed to stop sabotaging the few precious moments of sleep I get by waking myself with the sound of the cloister bell.
What I can’t quite shake out is the feeling that this is the day she realises what a huge mistake she made, packs my bags and breaks my hearts. My heart. Heart - I only have one. A single heart, a finite number of days to live and a remarkable lack of self-control.
This human body is so infuriatingly unpredictable. So many inane functions. So many disorderly urges. And the human brain, so fickle. So incredibly paranoid. Is she really listening to me ramble or is she somewhere on a beach in Norway? Is she holding my right hand significantly more often than she’s holding my left? Last night before bed, when she pressed it to her lips before shutting her bedroom door in my face, it was the right hand, wasn’t it? Which was the one she brushed this morning at the breakfast table? Is that a trend? Is that statistically significant? What would be an appropriate signal-to-noise ratio?
She’s here, though. She’s always here. Which is probably for the best, since if I were left alone for longer than five minutes I would likely fold into a ball and scream myself hoarse.
I might be a decidedly less brilliant version of myself and I might be stuck on the slow path, but I'm here and I’m not going anywhere.
You’re worth more than the whole of time and space, I think to myself as I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Just tell me it’s alright to hope’.
II.
Is there a you in this reality? I am here. You have to be. Somewhere along the way I figured out we cannot exist without the other. How can a universe exist without you? There is no me without you.
This dimension, this universe is just as vast. And in some remote corner of this universe, there is you. There has to be. Hydrogen and helium continue to combine, protogalaxies continue to collapse, planets orbit around the sun, and there is you.
Is it just zeppelins and pointless differences, or was it really different for you, for us, here? Are our people gone, and is it because of me? Are you trying to find me?
Can you still hear the drums?
I'm here in the slow path. I'm not sure I qualify as a fixed point in time and space but I might as well be. It’s all on you now.
Wherever you are, will you find me?
III.
In some other world you must be lying in bed, not sleeping, because you don't do that, but thinking. Thinking that if we are the same person, and we share one mind, then if you concentrate hard enough you can make out how it is for me right now, even if we are dimensions apart.
I can’t quite tell where you end and where I begin. I have no way to know how much these very, very human months have changed the way my mind works. Or how much these very, very alone months have changed the way yours does.
Are you wondering if it will ever get better? It will not. The possibility of this will always haunt you, but you will never know just how much you’re missing.
And if I could talk to you now, I would tell you it’s every bit as breathtaking as you imagined it to be. Your hands pressing hers into the mattress. Her tongue drawing circles on your collarbone. The sound of her breath hitching as you exhale into her ear. Oh, you have the whole of time and space, but you can never have this.
You have forever, but I hope you will not have to carry this burden for long. For your sake, and because we are still one, I hope it will be soon now. May you soon wake up a new man, with a new face, and all of this, all of us a distant ache.