I have left a long story with a dear friend. We spent pages together exploring whole new worlds. We lived as beggars and queens.

Somehow always connected. Intertwined in sisterhood.

We flipped through endless thick chapters and took note. Together we faced the world and made it out whole. We found freedom from sacrifice to air over water.

When the gunmen came sometimes we ran to dirt and other times hid behind stones. But never did we hide anywhere alone or in a crowd. When the other forgot their truthful past we were reminded like a magnet.  Never forgetting a mistake but always erasing our shared pain.  

Complete trust in one another.

Day and night all for the sake of pleasing the goodness.  Though as if swimming in a vast sea of memory, carried by waves with no destination in mind we felt free because we were together.  I was so unwise but I was happy still.  

We were given each other so to never be alone. Leaf after leaf passed through the printing press and we learned how to die. Strung up on clothespins in the breeze the whole narrative laid bare, we knew how to die and just died for the fun of it.

In our last game together we ran before the horn blew because we knew the soundless call from the wind. I ran to the stony-walled amphitheater while she watched from the top stair and shook her head. When the horn rang out, bodies on bodies filled the pit.  I’d lived this exact scenario years before as a child.

It was my earliest dream where I was drowning in a pit of grasping and sultry bodies and no one would save me. My chosen parents chose my brother over me and cycled away to safety because there was only room for one. I crawled out on my own digging and pulling against the red and steamy bodies. The stench was penetrating but I nonetheless reached the outer limits and found a gravel road.  I was five and crying.  I walked along this road alone hoping I would catch up to my parents on their bike.  I never stopped or slowed down.  I walked alone, sustaining myself on the belief that I could because I am. I walked the road for 15 years and my feet grew tough. The skin rough and calloused from the uncompromising rocks baked in the unrelenting sun. While I didn’t know where I was going, still I went bare. 

Now I return to this story.

The bodies flooded the rigid funnel and gnarled themselves into unbreakable chains or arms and rooted legs that cowered in the dish-away from the sharp bullets that rained down with fiery pleasure.  

I knew of my mistake and climbed faster out of this descent than I had before. And she was there.  The whole time watching from above. Giggling. When I made it to the outer edge, together we ran to the bridge, grabbed our books and ate up the last of our knowledge.  

The lightness of the pages and dark stories well written gave us the fuel to fly. As the soldiers rushed in, the twinned princesses took that great leap off the edge over the shimmering water and into the air.  

It didn’t matter if we splashed or soared because we couldn’t drown.  The dream ended but then the final memory flooded my mind.  My girl was gone.

We were together but I’d never see her again with these eyes.  She was forever at my back in loving harmony.  Instead, I returned from a long day at work to find my husband. I wasn’t at all tired but beaming with joy  He was there through the whole play watching from center stage.  It made me happy to know he saw it all.  I played well and he congratulated me with flowers in my hair.  

I paused. His whispers had been inside me since the dawn and were the bindings to the great book now complete. I felt no infatuation but pure admiration; pure inspiration; I was in love.