Twisted Tale (Phillips)

These stars of ours were written in darkness and bound with light... I fell in love with them thirty-five million heartbeats apart and an ocean away. One shaped me at the scratch of a pen and the other remade me with the strum of a note. And the truth is that I loved them both, desperately. I never foresaw our worlds colliding. How the past and present would crash together and leave us with nothing but a blinding kaleidoscope of pain. How the threads of all of our fates were already so inextricably intertwined from the moment of those first meetings. And maybe my selfishness is unforgivable... of being unable to choose. But they were both selfish enough to love me too. Even when they shouldn't have. That's what they don't tell you about love though. That it can be a selfish thing, never ending in its demand for the infinity of that one person. Or, in my case, two. And maybe that makes it okay... or maybe it just makes all of our actions all the more unforgivable. Maybe we all should have been better. I'll let you decide. Contains mature themes.

"To know the truth of our story." Everything in life has a price. Nothing is ever freely gifted. The universe always comes, whether in the brightest, cheek-aching second of the day or the darkest, most plaintive hour of the night, to collect its payment. To rattle and shake your world. To slither into the illusion of Eden painted by strokes of lies and deceit. And I had left the door open for it, welcoming the thief into my house to steal what was dearest to me. Even if I had done every unthinkable, irrational, detestable thing to prevent it. To fight the inevitable loss of the base mistake I had made. The princess that was never supposed to be mine. The deception that had slowly bled darkness into my soul. Eating away at the back of my mind in a cackling mockery. Throttling my throat with the words I had chosen not to speak. Because the love I had found, the one I had never expected, never foreseen, was a tale I had woven full of lies to keep. There was always a price. For everyone, in everything. Innocent and guilty alike. And now I'd learned mine. But what would theirs be? Contains mature themes.

"All of it existing somewhere in between everything." What is a life? A collection of memories? A series of glorious highs and heartrending lows? Is it a purpose, cumulative or singular? Or is it something more? Something beyond what is tangible or immaterial? Something beyond even what is found within us. Is it a million little touches? A thousand laughing smiles? Hundreds of shed tears and dozens of stolen kisses on a few desperate sighs? Is it the thread of yourself that you leave behind in those around you? The lives you're unknowingly fated to change simply by existing. A single moment of entanglement, forever binding the invisible matter of souls, until you're so much a part of each other that there's no chance of ever being the same. Even if you're fathomless miles apart. Even if one's gone while the other lingers. Even if the very love you hold is the thing that breaks you eternally. Leaving pieces scattered like notes somewhere among the songs of your life until it's all played together in one crashing crescendo of melody. The final version of this forever fractured story. Contains mature themes.