a letter to a girl past the rainbow bridge, who fought her great war.

for g, beloved of a beloved, after one year.

Dear you, my sister in arms, while you still carried them in this tenuous sphere, I wish you the greatest peace. I know what it means to be weighed down by the holographic voices, to seek the mystic serenity of the longest sleep. I pray that you stand under a beautiful sky, wherever you are.

I hope there is no war in that sacred city, no guilt or remorse or pain or angst. You have held those monsters on your shoulder blades for far too long. Time has a way of dilating, where even a second can feel like an eternity; relative frames demand a reconsideration of time’s skin and bearing.

I know the weight of those concrete shoes, and what it means to untie them. You were here for as long as your feet could keep you up, even if that eternity was a butterfly’s breath by some other angle. You deserve to breathe at your own pace, without Atlas’s burden held against you. I hope you have found that grace.

I, too, bear that weight. Someday, I will seek the same footpath that you found, depositing my bones on this weary road and seeking some far-off light. I have tried to slip my skin before, and will again, unless some happenstance claims me first, or else some trick of fate. This is how our bodies were built, the chemicals within twisting the world that presses against our eyes. But I still take my steps, with the peace of knowing that what will be will be.

There will always be tears in this world. We are built to shed them without shame; only the “wisdom” of thinkers past have bound the baggage to them. We will weep those tears. We will cause them. That is the way of the globe beneath our feet. There are no walls thick enough to keep human nature at bay.

I know that you know the fabric you cut, the oceans of heavy air that your choice poured into the hearts around you; one monster among the legion that fought for your gaze. I know that you loved as best you could love. Then came the moment where you had to love yourself more, in whatever way you could.

I hope that Thanatos and whatever Holy Ghosts there are, whatever psychopomps there be, can take our jigsaw hearts and make something whole out of them. We do not deserve to be broken throughout all of space and time.

For now, we down here hold ourselves together with prayers and swears and the strongest duct tape we can find. Bear our worries no mind. We will see you soon.

With love,
your brother beneath the stars.