It would be the last thing I ever did, probably, but I still want to ask her, sometimes. To give up running, go back, and look her in the eye.
Do you love me?
Can you love something that you birthed just as a part of your own power? Something that didn’t mean to demand so much sacrifice from you before it was even born? When I was just a clump of cells, she shed blood for me. She ate things that would have poisoned her if she hadn’t been carrying me, to make me into something that would suit her needs.
Because she saw lines at the corners of her eyes and lips, and she hurt more, moving, than she had even a year before, and she recognized what everyone does eventually – the end would come even for her, eventually.
You can only put so much soul in glass or paper. Thimbles or birds. There’s probably even a reason you could see under a microscope – some hot excitement in the molecules that makes them burn or rust or beat themselves against the bars of their cage until they collapse at the bottom and die. A human soul is a ruinous thing.
But the human body is built to fit it. Even the ones that aren’t like mine, made special like mine. We’re so resilient, we die, maybe, eventually, just because of the strain of holding our own souls.
If you make someone resilient enough, make them hollow enough, you can do amazing things with that extra space. You can store all sorts of things there. Magic and secrets, or maybe even a part of your own soul. To take the strain off of yourself, and so it’ll be waiting for you if your body ever gives up on holding the rest.
I ran. At the time, it felt like the only way I could keep being myself. But I was young then. Everything felt like the most important choice I could make, the only way to be myself. She would have made me as much like her as possible, so she wouldn’t have to deal with any tight corners- any inconvenient differences- if she ever needed to fit in me.
But who am I without her? I’m still that part of her. A thief, for taking it where she can’t reach it.
What if she dies while I’m this far away?
Will I still feel it? Will the part of her in me wake up once it’s the only one? Or has it already? Am I it already, was there ever a me other than it, ever a soul of my own?
I could ask her. She might even answer, before she made sure that I could never run again.
