Chapter 3
The Altar Meant for Someone Else
Waves crashed, one after another, like the heartbeat of the sea itself, steady and unyielding.
Each one rose, towering over the rippling expanse, a graceful yet merciless dance.
One, two, three… they kept coming, unstoppable and hypnotic, their rhythm as ancient as time.
The ocean moved with a beauty so raw, it was almost dangerous, a siren’s call, luring any soul who dared to get too close.
The water curled and swayed, an endless pulse, each wave sculpted with deadly allure, pulling hearts toward its depths with promises whispered in salt and foam.
I sat there for hours, or maybe it was only minutes, or maybe it was lifetimes, watching the tide pull at the edges of the world.
But if I’m honest, I don’t know if I truly saw any of it.
My eyes were open, but my soul had already drifted far, far away past the edge of this ocean, past this continent, past this version of myself that pretends to breathe without you.
Somewhere else, on another shore only I can see, you are laughing.
Your voice is the breaking of a wave in my memory, bright and wild and alive.
I feel your hands on my skin still, your breath against my throat, the sacred weight of your body pressed against mine, a thousand phantom touches stitched into the fabric of my being, refusing to fade.
Your smile, that rarest of miracles, lives behind my closed eyes. The way you looked at me, like I was something holy, something worth saving, haunts the marrow of my bones.
There are whole worlds built inside the little moments we shared, moments I inhabited more fully than any life I pretend to live now.
And so, with the remnants of my pride scattered like ash at my feet, because it means nothing in the absence of you, I bought a ticket. Shoved everything I was into a shaking fist. And I left behind everything I ever knew in search of the only thing that ever truly knew me.
You.
Always you.