Hunger
Anastasia flipped my entire world upside down. On hot summer nights with the windows open, we’d blast Muse and I’d want to somehow preserve the sweet smell of her breath in mason jars, save it for when things got bad. We’d talk breathlessly about our future as people who’d never become the dull citizens of some half-formed state. The promise of spiritual freedom, of starting fresh, of being reborn into something we thought the world had forgotten—it was all just one kiss away.
Around her I became a sponge. I wanted to absorb everything that had shaped her, every reason she’d become the person she was. Why did she suddenly eat only fruit? Why did she spend months wearing only black? When exactly did I stop being her best friend and become her biggest fan instead?
Ana was extreme in both her dreams and her actions. She had this fierce will to achieve anything she set her mind to, but underneath was a hurricane of self-destruction—restless, unconstrained, fearless. I couldn’t help but admire it. I wanted to own that way of seeing the world, even if I had no idea what it would cost.
It started small. Lake trips that meant nothing, casual hookups at parties, walks to the horizon with no direction. But it twisted into something toxic that poisoned my thoughts and swallowed my entire existence. I became a rabid thing, trapped in a cycle of deep regret and desperate love and endless unanswerable questions, slowly drowning.
The light got dimmer. I sacrificed myself but I wasn’t honest. I preached rebellion but collapsed in the wind. And I loved her soul while I wanted her body.
By the time it burned out, I’d already lost her to whatever came next. Her smell faded. The words died. That feeling of two souls fighting together against the end—it vanished into the dark with a hollow laugh.
What remained were the scars from another time, the weight of knowing it was all my fault. But somewhere in that loss, Anastasia became something bigger. She became the symbol of my will, my freedom, my courage. And somehow, that feels like redemption.