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It's so cold here. All the color is gone from the sky, even the purple (purple is always the last color to go, here).
You might not be coming back, this time. Or so I might speculate, did I not know better.
It's not like it's really been you, not most of the time. It's that echo of you that you send when you can't make it yourself. But that echo remembers more than you do.
That echo is kind of more mine than you ever can be again. That's the worst part of it, I think. The worst part of the choice we had to make, the way things turned out. That you can't ever know or understand, but I can't ever forget.
I do forgive you, though, you know. We were kids. We had only one other choice, and it would've been the same, in a way, except it would've been me who forgot, and you who remembered. Me who lived on in that place that thinks of itself as the real world, and you who died there, and only lived on here.
If you never make it back, and your echo stops coming, too, I still have to go on. We promised that to each other, there at the end of both worlds that would have happened if we hadn't allowed ourselves to break instead. If our bond with one another hadn't been so powerful that breaking it was sacrifice enough.
You've forgotten, it's been taken from you, but the hole it left held its shape just enough that you knew what you were missing. You can't remember, you can't even see me when you look right at me -
and I can't look right at you at all. I know you notice.
Your dreams are your mind trying to fill that shape with something that fits it. Your dreams are just dreams, but they are also your pathway to me, our connection. You really are here, or it's like you're here. I'm never quite sure which of those is closer to the truth.
But the further the dream gets from you being able to hold onto it into waking, the more real it is, the more you're truly with me again. When you know you're dreaming, those few times, the ones you might keep the memory of into your (empty?) life without me - in those, you aren't very real at all.
Or you're more real, but you're less here. I don't want to let that be true.
That would mean reality isn't what I promised it would be. What I promised I'd make it be.
And I can't break a promise to you. I never could.
You, though, can break promises. You do it all the time. But there is one, I think, that you won't break. You could, but you choose not to. You will always choose not to. If there is one thing I know, it is that.
You can't remember what you promised. You carry it, though, written indelibly in the hollow left by our separation, the very erasure of it from you making it even more permanent. As if it was written on stone, and then someone carved away just the writing. You could read the words just the same, if that happened, as if the writing was still there. And if you were blind, you could read it with your fingers tracing out the words.
But I can't tell you what you promised. I can't spell it out, I can't even hint, no more than I can look you directly in the eyes with what I have to see with, instead of eyes.
But I don't need to. It's cold here, and slowly, the engine of my spirit is burning up all the fuel I have left. The color is gone, and there's no colorless fire. And that's fine. I'll let myself grow colder and colder.
I'll sit here, frozen, waiting for you. My promise kept, my faith in you keeping yours unaltered.
You will be here in no time at all.