Here we are, holding hands, staring down at the dark, endless abyss. Here we are, standing at the edge of forever. Time does not exist here.

It’s just now. No future, no past. Just now. A singular moment, an infinite stretch of emotions and words left unsaid.

“I could conquer the world with one hand,” I tell her. “If only you’d hold the other.”

She stares back at me and smiles – she’s not strong enough for words to leave her pretty mouth. I, on the other hand, go on and explain how random life is, how fate glued us together when neither one of us expected for things to really matter.

“I was empty without you,” I whisper to her ears and kiss her on the cheek. Tears fall down over the edge of the world, never to reach the ground.

The top floor of the building that we call home for now is only twenty-three stories tall; it’s not much, but it does point out the fact that we are insignificant creatures. A fall is fatal from this height.

But death does not scare me. Strange, isn’t it? I’m about to die, there’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it, yet I do not fear death.

I just miss her.

Oh, god, I already miss her. Her cheeks resting between my palms, I miss her so much.

I don’t know what’s going to happen after they come in. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, a Heaven, a Hell, or I’ll simply get reincarnated into a monkey. I don’t know if I deserve anything at all. I’m neither good nor bad… I just am… you know… I simply exist, and I breathe, and I love, and I want…

And old habits die hard.

That’s what life is all about, actually. Habits. Life’s just like playing the same song on repeat. We do certain things, over and over again, and we get used to that.

I got used to her being around. We’d watch movies and order Chinese food… and kiss and make love, and I’d spend my mornings staring at her, waiting for her to wake up… admiring the splendor of her lips. I’d kiss her and tell her, “I love you.”

And all that… nonsense or not, routine, habit, whatever you want to call it; all that made me feel less alone. With her, I wasn’t all by myself in this world. There was someone who cared, who wanted to know.

Someone who’d miss me when I’d be gone.

Isn’t that what we all secretly want more than anything else?

Someone to miss us when we’re gone?

“I love you,” I whisper to her.

“I love you too,” her eyes scream the words.

God! Why is it that we always feel like we’ve got a lot of time on our hands until there’s no more time left?

“I… I… I didn’t… I had no…”

“I know,” the words tremble on her lips.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, seconds melt against each other to form the last moments we’ll ever spend together.

“You have to hide. They won’t look for you. They don’t know you’re here,” I say.

Her eyes say so much, and yet I can’t tell her any words of comfort. I can’t leave with her. They’d hunt us, chase us throughout the country.

“You know.” And I gently press my lips against hers. It burns. This last kiss; it burns right through my lips, sending a burning shiver down my skin. It’s hot and cold and electrifying. It’s better than the first time we kissed, in front of her parents’ apartment building, safely covered by a dark and cold night of November.

A knock at the door. “Come on, we know you’re there. Just save us some time and open the damn door.”

Time. That’s the only thing we truly care about. And it’s never enough…