“I wish you would stop acting like this for once. Please, you were so kind and loving. I wish you were still like that, before all this, before everything. I wish…”

“I WISH YOU DIDN‘T EXIST”

The words hit him like I didn’t expect them to. Ricotcheting off his body and bouncing back to me as I realised the weight of what I just said.

His body slowly started fading out, the hole getting larger like burnt paper, he clutched bellow his ribs, feeling the space of ceasing existence.

“I… I didn’t… I take it back”

I whisper softly looking up to him, tiny flecks of him floating up into the atmosphere. I stare at him, ‘why, oh why did I say that. He’s fading fast, how, oh how do I take it back’.

“Please I take it back!”

I yell up hoping for some omnipresent being I don’t believe in to come down and make it stop. Make him come back.

“Laura”

I hear him call quietly, his hand still resting on, well, nothing.

“It doesn’t work like that…”

I know it doesn’t, I’ve always known that, I’ve always been careful.

“You always take.”

His words are riveting, I’d always deny that when he said it, but how can I now, when my words are physically flaking off piece of him.

We stand in silence, waiting, for what I’m not quite sure. For a better time to say goodbye, closer to the end, or maybe we won’t say goodbye at all and I’ll be the last thing he sees before his existence is removed for this plane, unfortunate.

It takes a while before all that remains is his heart and his face. He utters final words.

“I said I would give everything for you. I meant it figuratively. You took it as permission to chip away at me, and I let you. I shouldn’t have.”

His eyes fade and his mouth all that’s left is his heart. Beating. Beating. The most beautiful part of him. Maybe I should have realised that. Finally that fades too.

I no longer see him when I look up, all I see is stardust.