I feel like I have nothing left to write these days. Instead of creating, I’ve been sitting on my bed in a vegetative state, guilt accumulating with every sip of wine I take. I know I should be writing—or doing something, anything. Sometimes, I catch myself simply waiting for nightfall, just so I can curl up and pretend to sleep, though occasionally, I find myself fantasizing instead.

Any words I manage to put down feel dull and meaningless—especially compared to you, or the kind of love and admiration that has been, is, and always will be within me. I have carried it with pride, deep within my heart, shielded from the harsh realities of this world. Sometimes it feels like the purest thing I’ve ever known; other times, it feels as though I’ve sold my soul to this love, just to feel anything at all. Believe me, in the darkest times of my youth, it was the light I clung to. It was the hope that, at the end of the line, you would be there—waiting for me, arms wide open, welcoming me into the light with your embrace.I felt your absence more deeply than I have ever felt anything before.

Ella didn’t know any other way to love than obsessively, religiously, and with a fiery passion. The kind that could make you shiver when her fingers brushed against your skin. And she would pray down on her knees to twirl you around her finger, to make you stay longer than you anticipated, and to give you a little more love in the hope that you would return it. To her, there were no limitations. She would give away her skin if a man she loved needed it. You could say that every man that ever laid his hands on her was a God she had to worship to reach the pearly gates.

This night was like many others. She was preparing her space to write poetry. It was as if she was preparing to worship a God of a sort – with a bottle of Shiraz on the table and Chopin on the recorder, she set orange and cinnamon-scented candles up in her room.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know that he wasn’t good for her or that he would never stay the night. It was that she had hope. She believed that in the depths of his heart, he had loved her all along, and one day he would choose her. The hope kept her eyes in a protective pink film every time she looked at his face. And all she wished for was to lay in his arms and to wake up to him stroking her hair.

He sat across from her on the train he took every day to work and back. Never had he seen her before, and there was nothing else that he could do than sit there, staring at her drawing while being perplexed by her beauty. He himself had never drawn before, or maybe he did when he was still in kindergarten and just forgot how much he enjoyed it.