Journal Entry 10/26/25

By Sarah Colleen (s.c.)

Do not think I forgot about you, dear reader. I have simply been stuck below the earth’s surface, witnessing life from the gallows. Another month gone [since I last wrote] and yet, I still yearn, I wish, I cry, I beg… Does he ever come back? The eyes seeing these words written in a time of agony- do I ever see his eyes again? Or, perhaps, like the beautifully pathetic Turk, Raif Efendi, do I wait ten years for a letter which I shall never receive? Time does not heal, not in this case. It continues on, but my soul remains stagnant, knotted and bound to him by an invisible, yet indestructible, string. When pulled taut, I stand before him, but he has given me the full length of slack. I watched as he tried to cut the string but failed. 

You, who feasts upon my despair and gluttonously gorges on my desperation, have you ever known an ache such as I describe to you now? Have you ever loved another so completely, you become aware you are never fully your own, but the flesh and spirit intentionally created to match that of another being? Have you ever smelt the sweet, warm pang of his exhale while he sleeps beside you? Have you never tasted the gourmet, savory delight of the laugh which so infrequently pulls at his lips? Have you never touched the delicate skin, smooth like a velvet petunia petal, which shelters the beating of his heart? Have you, not once, put your ear upon his sternum to feel the rise and fall of his chest, to ensure he is real? Tell me this, dear one- Have you ever felt a silence so loud, so terrible, so malignant, that you question whether you ever knew him, but merely dreamt him into existence? 

If there is a god and a hell, I am sure that no brimstone, nor great lakes of fire, awaits the filthy sinner, but simply a love that does not reciprocate. My hell is every single day in which the slack between us remains. The absence of him is the atonement I must endure whilst dreaming of the days long gone, when the only thing that divided us was a fine line.

We exist under the same night sky, and we walk these treacherous paths side by side, but his footprints no longer parallel mine. The ghost of him creeps past the corner of my eye. The gentle, yet masculine, musk of his fragrance will whisper on the wind at the most random hour of the day or night, this recognizable ghost of a scent I used to inhale and thank the gods for. Like Jane, I will flee back to him, my Mr. Rochester, but I find not only a torched manor, but the singed being of us and the best moments together, sprinkling as ash to the floor.

You, my beloved, were my greatest accomplishment, 

but together, we were an epic failure. 

Our Library of Alexandria, 

filled with one of a kind and precious memories, 

now in flames; 

illuminating the fall of our civilization.

My dear reader, when the stars glitter the sky under the matriarchal watch of the moon tonight, find two shimmering specks adorning the midnight without a breath of space between them. When you spot them, find comfort in knowing I found my beloved in the afterlife, and the hurt is no longer. Know that we did not ache for another in vain, and we can only go so far before human error tightens her shackled leash upon us. Find a sense of peace knowing we failed in this lifetime, but that we shall thrive in the next.

By Sarah Colleen (s.c.)