Chapter 30.

Blood Ballet by Maggie Rogers

It's a funny thing, I've spent all this time obsessing over the stars in the sky. They weren't out that night. I projected my love of stars onto my love of other things because I expected everything to stay just as constant. It did, but it carried with it the weight of being miles away.

Dear Harry,

I find myself finding you in my thoughts more than I believe I ever intended. If I had known more thoroughly just how much I'd learn to care for you when I first heard your voice, I would have been much too startled and would have likely run away. It's something I can't put words to, the things us people do when someone has a hand in our fate and pushes us to whatever it is that we need the most. I'm not the kind of person to invite strangers into my house, though I take it you might be.

Telling you how I feel is no easy task for me. In fact, I think I prefer many other things to verbally confessing. Which is exactly why I'm not verbally confessing. I am doing it here, on this piece of paper. Laying on my stomach, in the middle of my messy room. I think that's the best place to do it.

You amaze me, you really do.

...

I've come back to this unfinished letter with nothing more to say, nothing important. It's too late now, you've left. I ripped these pages out of my journal before giving it to you. I wouldn't have given you that journal if I didn't regularly put the lines into a google doc. You're lucky, Harry. Despite how much I held back, I gave you more of me than anyone's had ever before.

I don't have the energy right now to finish this.

yours,

darby.

To Darby Anna Eden,

I know you hate when I use all of your names but desperate times call for desperate measures. I have no clue as to how else I should start this, so I'll start by saying very simply that you healed me and I ruined this.

I know you'll think that was cliché, I feel like it's the only way to reach you for some reason. I also don't really know how to go about saying this. I miss you? I know that is horrible. This letter will probably never get to you anyways, there's no way I'll let it. I should say that I'm sorry before I miss you. I'm sorry doesn't seem to be enough, and I know only you could find the words to make it powerful enough.

I'm not sure my typical simplicity will reach you, Darby, though this letter won't either, so I guess I can say whatever I'd like, huh. It is quite the torture method but I was told to write letters to come to understanding. I think the only thing I've come to find is that I have no capability of it. I should get back to my point now.

I should never have rushed you. That was sick of me, I let it take over me until I was weak next to my own selfishness. I can't ever sleep, it's been getting bad. I have shows coming up, now that the album is released. I wonder a lot if you've listened to it. You heard a lot of it before, but I changed so many things after what happened. Which I think makes me feel worse, but I at least wanted to capture my feelings. I'm much better at capturing a broken heart than one beyond-words head over heels, don't you think?

If I could have seen that... that letter you wrote to me. That letter made me want to write this one, Darby. Anyways, I like to think that this would have turned out differently if I could have just seen it with my own eyes. But that's a selfish thing to think... you weren't ready for lots of things but showing me that letter... I've decided to keep that as my biggest regret in the category of other's actions. I told you I'm selfish.

God, Darby, you remind me of the sun. In every way. You radiate light like it could save the world, and I'm honestly shocked it hasn't yet. I read your journal, respectfully, although you did give it to me. That was the last piece of you you felt you needed to give me. You know just how to tear me apart, Darby. And just how to pull me back into your embrace with the exception of miles in between us.

I love you for that. How ironic is it that the very words that pushed you away are the only ones I feel are enough to bring you back?

Yours,

H.

Dear H,

There was nothing we could do about it. You're a golden boy with an open heart that would eventually scare me to insanity. I've felt like screaming at you for the past few weeks, though it would have been nicer to scream to your face. Now that I've calmed the storm, I'm writing you an answer. To nothing in particular but the letters I've imagined you writing after I told you to address your feelings physically...

If I told you I was doing better, it wouldn't be a lie. After a lot of thinking, I've decided to publish the lines I wrote in my journal last year... into a book. It'll be short, yes... but it only felt right to release the most vulnerable part of me. You would've liked to hear that. My publisher liked it at least.

I hope Sarah and Mitch and them are doing well. I miss them a lot, Harry. I still talk to Sarah on the phone every once in a while. She doesn't say anything about you. I did ask her not to, but it hurts nonetheless.

I don't want to blame myself, but of course I do. I think I blame both of us. The way you felt about me was no simple task for my anxious and daunting insecurity. And the way I felt about you... that was a whirlwindic, blindsided storm with an eye of ecstasy and the rapture of shiny things that catch the innocent eye. I might as well have been created from Emerson's theory of elusive stars that come out every thousand years, you were my stars and you made me feel like a child seeing them for the first time. And that was every single time, Harry. You may have a golden heart but your soul breathes in night air from the stars with no names and your soul was indescribable to this poet I've become and, god, I'm realizing again that I still to this day know how to love.

If I were to have saved every flower you brought to my doorstep, I fear that I would still not yet have enough use for my tears. And now this page sees them too, and my words are smearing. But I think that contributes nicely to the effect, don't you?

A short letter for a long while,

Darby.

It was the first thing I saw, scribbled in the inside front cover. Simple, and all too perfectly her.

'my middle name is anna.'

Darby Anna Eden.

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