my first love was female, despite being my namesake, and elfish in her ways, and i’ve never been quite so inspired and so desperate at the same time ever since; what’s more puzzling, however, is the way she got canonized somewhere deep within my brain. branded right into the grey matter, it seems, so that i never judge and always welcome, like you do with a parent or a child or a twin, even though not only there isn't a slightest remnant of the initial feeling left - there’s nothing left to feel it with, after the lobotomizing experience my second love provided.

took me a while to realize that it had all been her attempt at mercy, what i’d taken for reciprocity back then. it was her mercy that fed my obsession so it lasted for 5 years and nothing else. i wasn’t happy for a day back then, as stripped of carnality as that fixation’d come, although now that i look back i can tell that the attachment itself was good, pure and lethally intense, and it made me write, what’s more important, because writing was a safe way to impress - to pay tributes, to present my sacrifices, to visualize the variety of things she made me feel. because we both never really managed, when it came to talking, and it hasn’t changed since then, and it’s funny, ’cos now she barely remembers who i am, while i still remember every little detail of that crippling discovery i accidentally made by stumbling upon her short stories. i had no chance to learn anything about her outside of her prose until i got a chance to introduce myself. so it was a very neat method of falling in love, smooth and squeaky clean, beyond the risk of being ruined by some stupid disconcerting trifle masking the heart. just the bloody heart, self-dissected and served for a diligent observer to study. and i was diligent with my studies back when i was 18, oh i was, and the further discoveries lying within proved enough to erase me entirely, and there’s nothing i’ve ever sought for harder than getting erased out of existence, after all, so no wonder. as proud as i am of her career advancement and personal achievements, there’s hardly anything that i’ve ever felt more sorry about than her abandonment of writing. i might not be a genius at it myself, but i’m observant and skilled enough to be able to see and appreciate someone else’s talent, as well as tell it from pretense. but i do get the reason she left it, sure. some kinds of writing are incompatible with socializing, so you have to choose one over the other to proceed, and that’s where we really parted ways - as friends rather than lovers, which we never really were, and it might have been the wisest way to treat it from her end. facing the rabid dog that my emotions used to make me while i was still able to experience them to the fullest.

the discovery of a sleeping beauty, frozen in her glass coffin in some forsaken place in the north. despite sticking to her distinct everlasting dysphoric tone in social media, i know her well enough to tell she’s doing fine. outdone me in many ways by now. those she hadn’t remain rather immaterial, and that part i don’t regret in the least. yet still, out of all stories i’ve ever become a part of, this one makes for a rather pleasant memory, thanks to her efforts when it came to mercy, and thanks to mine when it came to keeping it intact