...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.

He gathers me up and I'm weightless before he sets me on the railing. He's the only thing keeping me from falling back, out of the reach of daylight. I'm not afraid of falling. I don't fear the sky beyond the train tracks like I did before. I can go anywhere just so long as it's with him.

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.