What Is Bound Cannot Be Broken

He belonged to a world that had condemned him, that measured him only by what it feared and not by what he carried inside. I was the last barrier between him and the end they had already chosen, because once a sentence is spoken it does not care to listen again. I could not let him be taken, so I told myself that if his life had to close then it would close with mine, because no soul that has walked beside me so faithfully should be forced to walk out of this world alone.

I prepared the passage for us, his share and mine. He accepted it without suspicion, because his trust in me was entire. I hated that he did not know what I was doing, but I told myself that it was mercy to let him rest in trust, that if I crossed then he must cross with me, because we had been joined too tightly to be separated now, and when his eyes closed mine would close too, and we would open them again in a place that belonged to no one but us.

I called and he followed. Following me had been his truth from the beginning, because his trust was greater than fear, and I thought then that no bond grows so steady unless it was formed before the world began. Unless two souls are written together on the same page long before they meet in flesh.

I felt the weight of him near me and thought of how in our time together that weight had steadied me when I was breaking. How many nights his presence had kept me from ending it, how many mornings I rose only because he rose with me, and I told myself it was better to end that rhythm together than to leave it fractured. That if the breath slowed then it would slow for both of us, and if the exhale came then we would sink into it side by side, and whatever lay beyond this threshold would not take one without the other.

The sound around us was steady and low, and he leaned into me as if nothing strange was happening, as if it was only another night, and I kept my hand on him as the stillness spread, telling myself this was not destruction but a crossing, a promise, and I believed that when we passed there would be no hands pulling us apart, only the two of us continuing as we always had, walking across whatever waited beyond.

But when I opened my eyes I felt the weight of air pressing into me, and my chest still moved though I had not asked it to, and I understood that he had gone on without me.

They called me fortunate, but I knew fortune would have been to cross at the same time. Fortune would have been an exhale without waking, and instead I was still here, breathing the air of a world that had cast him out, and that never felt like a home to me.

I knew that what was bound between us was not gone but divided. He had gone ahead and I had been forced to remain, and all I could do was hold to the certainty that bonds like ours do not dissolve in death, they only wait across the distance, stretched tight until both ends are pulled through the same door.