There must have been a life she went through without him by her side.

Every day, in and out, from dawn to dusk, with no one to look at her the way he does. Pale lavender eyes sprinkled with ever so human joy, vulnerability, and a pinch of starlight. A smile that shines as soft and uncompromising as the daytime moon. Reaching out to her, the sun, on the other side of the sea that is the sky. Fingers half-hardened with pain yet half-softened with love, simple in warmth, everlasting in strength, never letting go. This story of hers, and the spot he claims in it: hand-in-hand, side-by-side. This picture of people she loves, and the balance he frames in it: a circle called “the heavens”, paved by the lines “me” and “you”.

There must have been a life where she brushed her thumb along the photo glass, staring at the gap in the crowd, wondering if anything was missing at all. Where she told her story without ever saying his name. Where she reached out to the horizon instead of her side. Strength on her own is something she’ll always have—in this life, in the last, in the next—but the strength of love is something she’ll never know. She’ll take it for granted now, go without it in the past, and forget all about it in the future. She’ll never love the act of loving as much as it deserves. As much as he deserves. Never enough to keep it, to keep him, with her.

And there must have been a life where these thoughts never even struck her mind. Where even absence was absent, where she never had to know that what she didn’t know was what she’d always be missing. Where a boy of pale lavender eyes and a smile like the moon was ten thousand light years away from nothing. Where all the lantern-writing names and soul-blossoming laughs around her were all she’d ever need.

Would he watch her from some distant plane she’d never see, missing her? Missing himself? Missing the chance to be among those lanterns on the lines, strung up to the sky, living, living as big and bright as the dancing star-flowers ringing through the night. Would he follow her, always three steps behind? One for departed love, and two for the her and the him that could have been. Would he waver in the space between unborn and forgotten, flightless from mere fancy to deep fire, and burn: like mercury, like tears that will never fall?

Drip, drop.

Shooting stars, and then, they’re lost.

(But maybe, there must, too, have been a life they shared from start to finish. From the inception of the first thread to the tying of the final knot. Hands together until the end of time. Names engraved on the same lantern, up to the sky. Laughter—me looking at you, you looking at me—blooming to show every other flower what “please, be mine” truly means.

And in a field of sunflowers and dandelions, she’ll pluck a stem and weave it into the hair behind his ear. “It looks like the daytime moon.” She’ll whisper. “It looks like you.”

“Just like these look like you.” He’ll pull a sunflower to her face, cradling her cheek where the palm of his hand meets petals of gold.

“And it looks like you,

it looks like you,

belong with me.”)