Where the Stars Go to Rest

There are stories that follow the wind, and love that do not return—if you are lucky enough, may it be a peaceful forgetting.

Time can bury bones, even gods, left rotten.
Not every story is meant to be remembered.
Some are too soft, too sacred, too painful.
Like the dust that moves with the wind in gaps beneath the door.
It collects, unmistakably felt.

HER.
I was once everywhere.
In the hands of gentle longing, in letters passed beneath a hold.
In the seat unclaimed beside a new friend, or on beds never made again.
Friendship was my domain—I could not do with conquest like Ares or seduction like Aphrodite.
But I am here even when they weren’t.

I need no temples, only people. Honest people, brave people, and kind people. That was enough to keep me alive.
Until the people started to forget. Not all at once.
But slowly enough that it felt like leaves falling, that no one looked up anymore.

And then there was him.
There was only him.
He who never asked anything of me.
He who arrived just as everyone left.
He who carried peaceful endings.

He stayed, he remembered.
But I—
I began to forget.

But the sound of his voice felt like a story I’d experienced too long ago.

HIM.
I am not easily loved by all.
They do not sing to me or light white candles for peaceful death.
I am never asked to stay.
They only ask I take it gently,
quietly,
without resistance.

But she…
She made me feel no ruin.
She didn’t tremble, and I didn’t tremble…
She reached for me in places even I feared.

Where grief had no language,
She became one.
She was mine.
Goodbyes, it felt too cold, I wanted less of it and more of her warmth.

I learned to want things I had no right to.
A seat by her side.
A name in her garden, in her palm, perhaps her heart.
To never part.

But I was too selfish; it undid her.
She faded; I faded—there was no us.
Then we were swallowed by the wind.
And only I could remember her.

I could not bear it, so I chose silence.
Buried her name beside mine,
where we both once stood.
And I sit and wait.

For this love to feel again. Even if it ends the same way.