By Tatiana Bogdanov

there was a girl with galaxies in her eyes. she was always in a quarrel, with herself, with the people around her, with everything and everyone she touched.

he met her, and he was smitten. she looked at him all shy and nervous and jumpy, and he could only stare back.

the anxious thoughts that she shared with him, that first true conversation of sorts, conducted over the course of a day, over texts,

pulled him into her orbit.

her thoughts were his thoughts,

her eyes were his eyes.

and the conversations continued. quiet texts throughout the day, pulling him closer and closer, and yet he could never read her. she couldn’t read him.

two hearts beat, feeling the same, but two hearts wandered,

feeling as if they were the only hearts in the world

he learned of all her inabilities. he learned of all her insanity. he learned how much she complained.

strange feelings grew in his chest, wrapped around his lungs like vines

she looked in the mirror, and all she saw in herself was annoyance, ugliness, the scars she amassed and never ignored.

he saw how she was perpetually wounded, and yet. he fell in love all the same

he looked in her eyes, and saw tempests of stars

he looked in her eyes, and wondered what her lips would feel like on his.

he looked in her eyes, and he saw her; unbridled, unfiltered, confused at the actions other people took, freer than all and yet trapped like a dying bear.

he saw the cluelessness. he saw the confusion. he saw the intelligence. and dare he say, he saw the love?

she was self-centred. she was arrogant. she was hopeless, and a whiner.

and yet, his heart hammered at the thought of seeing her. his stomach leapt into his throat when he did. he hadn’t felt so nervous in years.

was he in love with the idea of her? was he in love with her?

texts turned into late-night conversations, her pouring her heart out and him gladly drinking it up. circles grew under his eyes, under hers; yet he’d never felt more awake.

he saw her in the hallways and could barely muster up a hello. he saw her in her classes and brashly looked away.

she was uncatchable. she was unbelievable. to him, she floated through life, above it all.

she was infinitesimal

‘how is this life good enough for her?’ he wondered.

he wondered the way the world looked, when you looked at it through galaxies.

the girl felt the same way. after all, he was the boy with galaxies in his eyes.

she couldn’t think of talking to him without her stomach doing flips.

he made her fingers and toes tingle, and her breath catch in the most delightful manner.

she couldn’t stop the laughter around him,

because seeing him gave her a high.

she often felt like she was wandering through life alone, untethered yet ungrounded. loved yet unliked. as lonely as the woods in the north. as solitary as the stars.

and yet, with him? With the texts,

that so often felt like she was talking to no one and to everyone? sounding off on everything; competing for the title of most sad.

so often they talked, never addressing each other.

so often they talked, and the judgement that seemed to come from so many others, never came.

they could be them.

she felt alive. she could feel the blood running through her veins. she could feel every one of her nerves on fire.

she felt linked.

here were two people.

they wished so hard they could read each other’s minds,

to know what the other thought,

about them, about life, about the universe as they know it, about everybody, about their dreams

young and naive. selfish and sad. mature beyond their years, yet plagued with stupid decisions made left and right.

alone, they had both meandered. alone, they had both digressed; deviated, diverted from everyone for no reason other than they couldn’t figure out how to fit in.

and together, they could dance in the dark.