the words dont come as easy as they used to anymore.
//
the ocean washed over your grave. the moonlight was dim over the beach's horizon. high tide was coming soon. and the stick that i planted right where your body once stood was slowly getting knocked over by the waves. dying had always been your one fear. funny. you've died a million times over by now. i wondered how scary your final one would be?
watching you materialise out of thin air would always be jarring, no matter how many times i saw it happen. some things, you never get used to. like how i would never be able to touch your face again. or us laughing in the car with paramore blasting on the aux. yet tonight was different. your grave festered silently in sappho's silky glow.
what happens when you lose your muse? well, that question is easy to answer. the romantic would answer blithely that you never really lose someone you loved before; they'll always live on inside you, your memories. your headspace. and, well, can you really tell them otherwise? what even separates memory from reality anyway?
what happens when you find out that your muse never even existed in the first place, then? what if they were always a figment of your imagination. your brain had to find a way to stave off the loneliness, and perhaps the psych would say that such a reaction was unnatural. a freak of nature. but you knew it was real. everything i had with you was real. even if it wasn't.
on the drive here to the beach, you were eerily quiet. not your usual self. well. i should never have taken them in the first place. i remembered putting on hozier, and the edges of your lips perked up ever so slightly. by then you were already fading. it took a lot of willpower on my end to keep you real.
but now it doesn't even matter anymore. you were gone by the time they wore off.
as i stared off at the horizon, the moon's soft glow grew cold against my face.
without you here, was i even real then?
as if on cue, the waves crashed over me, and i dropped under.