She remembers walking into the ocean with him and sinking like a stone. It had been freeing, to give into the water like that. To not command it or request of it or anything. She had simply let it become their end—simply let it wash over them both, let it sink into her lungs until there was nothing but it.
And the children.
Oh, the children!
She had left them curled together (so precious, made of glass—so nearly always glass with their coupling!) and walked to the end with him. Blood on her lips.
The end had seemed so unyielding.
But they had been together—and isn’t that what it was meant to be?
For a while, they had been together on that other side. Always him. Always her. But even in the end, it was not meant to be final and she felt him slip away. Felt him pull between the spaces between her fingers until he was no longer and it was just her. She found Charity, eventually. Her beautiful, darling girl. The first one and in this world, her glass heart was not so fragile. Not so vulnerable to the world’s cruelty.
But Charity left too.
So she watched and waited. Wandered the darkness in search of things that she could not name.
Until the darkness lifted. Until she found a split in the veil and her greedy heart clutched in her chest. She followed that tendril of light until it spilled out more and more. Until it was blinding and, suddenly, she was in that ocean again. But this time, the ocean was not pulling her down but pulling her in. She felt the tide wash her up on the shore and, even though she called to her gift, it did not answer.
She was alive, but left hollow.
Her body felt strange—bloated, empty, thin—but it was a marvelous thing to pull in cold air into her lungs. It felt marvelous to walk and find the beach still led to the meadow. She closed her eyes and smiled into the wind as it pulled her damp hair back and it felt right when she opened her eyes to find him there.
“Garbage,” she whispers—and that his name is the first word she says in this life is right too.
I reached out to undress it and love let me down
garbage - cool so this FEELS like your fault