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I smile, but my chest tightens. The thought of ending the cycle never left my mind.

I still feel it, the fear of disappointing them all. I know what grief does to the people left behind. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived inside it. It doesn’t make them stronger. It makes them weak sometimes, the smallest wounds reopen whenever it hits again. It’s not egoistic, or maybe it is. Maybe after spending your entire life carrying everyone’s pain, choosing your own escape is the closest thing you’ve ever had to choosing yourself.

“What if I get too tired?” I ask, not really meaning to say it. “What if whatever she had in her, I have it in me.”

She straightens up immediately. “Then I’ll be there.”

I let out an almost sad sigh. “It’s not always enough.”

That’s what kept me going for years. Surviving the need to stop the pain from hurting, to stop the thoughts from screaming that ending it would solve it all. Remembering what it felt like to be on the other side of it, powerless, watching someone become a memory buried six feet deep in the ground.

“Would you fight to stay with me?” She asks softly.

“Until my last breath.”

She takes my little finger. “Pinky promise,” she says

I looked at her for a long time. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just repeating my mother’s promises in a different way, with better timing and more silence around it. But then I hook mine onto hers, pulling it up, with the moon as our witness. “Pinky promise.”

We settle back down, closing the tent and she whispers, “Love you, Rey. To purgatory and back…”

“Me too,” I murmur, and for a second, I let myself believe that some promises can last longer than the people who make them.

81

Unknown

Play - Moon River by Audrey Hepburn

My sweet undoing

Beautiful girls don’t leave you.

They stay as they are, statues in the middle of a museum, for the eyes to see and for the mind to remember. Raven hair is spending time with her professor.

And her bright eyes are sadder when he’s not there anymore.

Raven hair cries a lot when she’s alone and she begs me to stop hurting her when she’s asleep.

Dreaming has always been her escape but she never truly escaped. I had control over her subconscious, over her darkest nightmares. I had control over her drawings, and how fast she could relapse in what kills her slowly.

Raven hair doesn’t know that beneath me, a storm is forming.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

One day all that control will be let free, and Raven hair is going to be hurt. That day, I’ll be there to comfort her before pushing the knife deeper into her heart.

Each man kills the thing he loves…

82

Mireya

Play - Medicine by Daughter

Run away

The month went by too fast. A month without him, a month spent laughing and being happy with Milo and Edna at home.