Dearest Jemimah,

Forgive me. The seas we find ourselves navigating are rough and circumstance has not been kind. I feel as though fate is no longer on our side and the stars are aligned against us. Whenever I look at you I no longer see the person I fell so deeply for, but a vast ocean of broken promises blankly staring back at me. All the times I have let you down piled up like rotting carcasses searching my soul. They are worthless but they kill me. To me, they are your landscape and I cannot escape their haunting presence, not even to admire the truest beauty embedded so deeply within you.

Your eyes no longer hold the secrets to happiness in this cruel, spiralling malady of an existence we find ourselves in, and your heart is so battered and bruised that it’s only a matter of time before it forgets how to beat. I will do all I can to stop this from happening, but I fear it will not be too long before the same demons that cast us so cruelly into this mess will return to finish their work.

It tears me apart to think of all the pain I have caused you. If it has taught me anything, it is that love, lust, hate, anger, rejection and heartbreak work in different ways, and I can never blame you for trying to fill the holes in your heart with anything that made you forget the haunting, even for the shortest of times. Just please remember that you’re far too beautiful to have your body be battered and thrown around for the pleasure of some worthless lowlife trying to get a cheap fix. You’re worth so much more.

Most don’t understand your beauty but those who do will never forget it. You’re an ocean, and I a teardrop. You’re the vibrant colours in our black and white world, whilst I remain a mere grain of sand lost on a sad and lonely beach. You had the stars and the moon wrapped around your little finger whilst the universe brewed in your deep blue eyes. The world is beautiful. The world is pure. You belong here and you should never forget it.

I’ll always regret letting you slip away like sand through my fingers as I stared blankly at my life moving on without me. Maybe, in many years time, the Stars will realign and our paths will unexpectedly cross, and I will finally be able to construct the final chapters of our story. Maybe this time it won’t end in heartbreak. Maybe this time things will be different. Or maybe it will never happen and you’re gone forever. Maybe your haunting and my haunting aren’t so different after all.

Yours, forever,
Jake