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“I used to think,” she says finally. “If my mother could do it, then maybe it was something I already had in me too.”

I don’t interrupt her but I want to, I do. Because I know what that means, how scary it is.

“It wasn’t even scary at some point,” she continues. “That’s the part that still messes with me. It just started feeling… familiar. Like it was always going to be there. It kept showing up when things got too loud in my head.” She swallows, eyes still down. “And then it turns into this idea that leaving would make things easier, for everyone. That thought that I’d be doing something quiet and clean instead of…this.” Her voice tightens slightly. “I don’t always want it, it’s not like that all the time. It just comes and goes like it knows where I am even if I hide and always finds me.”

I reach for her hand before she can disappear too far into her own words, and hold on a little tighter than I mean to.

Then she speaks again, “I don’t know how to stop either.”

“Then use the lighter,” I say. “You know, it was my mother’s lighter.”

She tilts her head, curious about the rest of the story, and I let it out, hoping she’ll understand why I’m worried.

“My dad left when I was born, and I grew up with this idea that leaving was normal. That when things got heavy, you just…go. And I hated him for it. I still do.” My thumb moves once against her hand. “But I also spent a long time thinking I might end up the same way if I wasn’t careful enough. Like it was something you either fought or inherited without meaning to.”

She watches me, eyes soft as the rain.

“But it destroyed my mother. She fought against addiction but never won that battle and the lighter is the last thing connecting me to both of them,” I add. “I don’t want to be that kind of person. The kind that leaves when someone needs them most. Or the one who loses someone else because of the same battles. So please, if it gets too dark in your head, use it and find me.”

Her grip tightens slightly. “I don’t think you are,” she says as she exhales, shifting a little closer, head on my shoulder, and looking out of the window.

“I’m never leaving you. Even if you leave me every time you feel too sad,” I say, caressing her hair.

Then she speaks again, softer. “You’re right. When it gets too much,” she says, “I go somewhere else in my head. I meet my younger self there. She’s always waiting in the same place.”

“Where?” I ask, quieter than I mean to.

She hesitates. “On the cliff, it’s always the same one. I don’t know why it’s always there. She’s just there, waiting, and smiling with bruises all over her.”

Something in my chest tightens, but I keep my voice steady. “And you go there a lot?”

“More when I’m tired,” she admits. “Less when I’m okay.”

I squeeze her hand once, and say, “I don’t like that place.”

She almost smiles, but it doesn’t fully form. “It’s not like I choose it,” she says.

“Where do you come back to?”

She finally meets my eyes again. “This,” she replies simply. “You, looking at me with eyes begging for me to keep fighting.”

The room feels quieter after that as I pull her a little closer.

“Promise me something,” she says quietly. “If I ever start fading away, if I feel far away… don’t let me go there alone again.”

Her fingers tighten slightly around mine.

“I will always find you,” I whisper. “Even when you’re in your own head, or when you close the door on me before I can reach you. Just don’t stop letting me try.”

And a while later, she leans into me like, and I stay awake long after she falls quiet against me, thinking not about where she goes when she disappears into her head, but about how easily she still comes back.

And how much I need her to keep doing that, until she doesn’t need to.

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Mireya

Play - Orbiter by Noah Kahan