We meet, in slow motion. 
We fall, in fast forward.

Your touch, your lips, your voice... slow motion. 
My breaths, my thoughts, my heartbeats... fast forward.

You retreat, in slow motion... while I'm depleting, in fast forward.

And maybe you were just dipping your toes - a testing of temperature. But before the arch of your foot could wet itself in the river, I had already leapt headfirst. 

Ripples spread along the surface. Indicators of a quiet drowning, for I was submerged in you. I drank your false promises as if they were oxygen. I drank them as if my lungs were immune to filling with fluid. I drank them like I might've survived on your words, and your words alone. 

But I learned that, while underwater, the whole world moves in slow motion. 
My limbs, my hair strands, my eyelids.

And where you were - still above sea level - things moved quickly. 
Your limbs, away from me. Your hair, ruffled by the wind. Your eyes, darting, dry, and tearless.

Just as quickly as you'd lifted me from the rubble, you'd dropped me again. Cut me off, like a dangling string. Like a split-end. Like a tightened noose around your neck.

Like I was nothing to you. Nothing at all. 

How was I to find my balance along the tightrope, when my head knew it was over... but my heart cried that it wasn't?

How was I to let go when, for a moment, you'd made life feel like a beautiful film reel? As if a love like ours had never existed before us, and would never exist again after our demise? 

But you told me that everything must come to an end - that all good things do. You told me about the ephemeral state of true happiness and love. You told me that, eventually, everything and everyone dies. 
And maybe that's so - but everyone else is busy dying in slow motion, while I'm stuck dying in fast forward.

Slow to heal, fast to cry. 
Slow to move, fast to blame. 
Slow to reason, fast to isolate. 

If love is ephemeral, why can't I let you go? 

The movie of us has been stuck for so long in my head, that scenes are beginning to erase themselves. I was never allowed the luxury of pausing... or rewinding.

Because life is no beautiful movie, and there is no going back in time.

So, we go on. And on we go. 

You go on, living in fast forward, while expecting me to remain in slow motion. You go on, taking every promise and every word with you, apart from one... sorry.

You ruined my faith. You shred my dreams to pieces. You stole my hope. You lit my happiness on fire and didn't even stick around to watch the fumes consume me. 

You tore my soul to shreds, and then ripped the remnants of me. 

And all that you can say is... sorry.