Page 64 of Earthly Ties

Lucy would never say that, of course. She is sweet and supportive. She makes Esther laugh when she’s upset and holds her when she cries. She pretended to call her on her birthday because no one else did. Lucy would never tell Esther she’s wrong to hope, or that her feelings aren’t valid, or that she should give up.

But Lucy doesn’t have to say it. Because Lucy lives on in Esther’s heart. Lucy’s love, her laughter, and her curiosity flutter against Esther’s ribs. Her resignation, her hopelessness, her reluctance to talk about anything worth talking about resonates within Esther’s sternum. Beyond that, Esther can feel Lucy’s determination to move on, and oh, it aches through her whole chest, like the worst heartburn.

Esther is so tired of people leaving her.

Are you okay?

Lucy’s concern almost hurts worse than her doubt.

Tears burn streaks down her temples and dampen her hair, but Esther doesn’t answer. If she tells Lucy what she’s feeling, Lucy will say the right things to calm her down. She’ll make Esther see sense, all while feeling loved and supported.

Esther doesn’t want to see sense. How could she possibly feel loved when—given the chance—Lucy would leave her, just like everyone else who claimed to love her? What can Lucy’s support be worth, if it comes with a gentle reminder that she thinks Esther is foolish?

Why does Lucy refuse to hope?

If Lucy is truly dead, where is her body? How can Esther kiss her, and hold her hand, and look into her lovely eyes if there’s no hope? If there’s no chance that Lucy could come back, why are her doors—her body—still in Esther’s dreamland? If Lucy’s truly dead, how can Esther feel all of her emotions like a rope around her heart?

Even if Lucy already gave up on herself, Esther will not. There has to be a way.

East, you awake?

Esther stays quiet, stifling her sniffles, wallowing in her spite. How dare Lucy tell her not to hope? All these months of sharing a brain, a body, a heart, and Lucy still doesn’t understand Esther. Doesn’t she know that if anyone could spin a hopeless, frustrating situation into a chance of happiness, it’s Esther?

You know I can tell you’re only pretending to sleep, right?

Silent as the grave and unyielding as a headstone, Esther lays still until sleep finally takes her.

Twenty-Nine

Esther finally falls asleep, and I am once again alone in the dark as time slows to a standstill. Alone with my thoughts and the emotions from whatever dreams dance in Esther’s head. The grief and loneliness that I always assumed to be my own are already drowning me—

“Wake up.” We whisper it together. I float to the bed to lie beside her, tracing the curve of her perfect, round cheek. “Please, look at me. Come back to me.”

Over the past year of haunting her, Esther’s sleeptalking has kept me clinging to sanity. I always thought she was parroting my thoughts to her, but perhaps I am the parrot. Maybe all of these thoughts, these whispers I echo, are from her, dreaming of me.

The guilt wracking me is my own, I know that; Esther cried herself to sleep, because of me. But the rest of this riot? There’s no end to my own emotions. The tangled mess of my heart blends into the flood coming from my East.

Squeezing my eyes shut as the tears escape from them, I pretend to be asleep, just like Esther had been for hours after our argument. As always, she anchors my focus. Her deep even breaths, the rise and fall of her chest under her duvet in the dark room, are the closest I’ll ever be to sleep. I wish I could go back to the dreamscape. Not just to dream again, not just to actually touch her again, but to Untie myself somehow, like Dad said he tried to do.

To pull myself out of this cold, ghostly plane.

Grounding myself, I curl up alongside my East as soft snores and desperate murmurs escape her. Her heat is a scalding comfort, and I can’t help but lean into her.

I wish I could wake up on our cloud blanket again and wake up in the morning; I’d be in my body, not a spirit or a ghost or some intradimensional anomaly Tied to hers. As I lose my ground, I sink deeper and deeper into her, until I can pretend the rise and fall of her chest is mine. That I’m asleep and warm right alongside her, as I desperately long to be.

I wish I could give her the impossible. I wish I could go back and change everything.

I wish I could live again.

The Only Choice

Esther sits on the cloud blanket, waiting in front of Lucy’s gate like she always does. Every night, she has sat with the prone form of Lucy in her dreams. Missing when Lucy was awake to kiss her, swim with her, fuck her until they were both too spent to think, and pretend not to laugh at Esther’s bad jokes.

Purple glitter grass waves in the breeze.

Shimmering bubbles in the river float to burst into the aurora smearing the sky.

Lucy’s gate stays closed. Like it has every other night for the past year.