I am back inside my room, my, I wonder when it became mine, property, something to possess. I am thinking about the emptiness of my body. It is after the Birth. I sit on my chair and look up at the ceiling wreath, the moondust curtains. Moondust. Fine powder, like freshly fallen snow. Sometimes when I lie in bed I like to imagine I am being bathed in a shower of moondust snow; the curtains feel less suffocating then. I imagine I am space, I am the moon, far and unreachable, untouchable.

The Birth was a success. That is good news. And yet, my thoughts are venom and I am green with envy. Green with envy, that used to be a common phrase. Who was it that decided green would represent envy? Envy feels red, like this stifling dress.

I am red. I am envy.

The feeling of the Birth reminded me of my own, though its’ distant now, bygone, dead and buried. How many synonyms are there for the past? I begin to list them in my head, it distracts me from the salt I begin to taste on my upper lip, cascading down my cheeks like waterfalls. My body is racked with the memory of shivers, contractions, deep, gutting pain. Pain is a hard thing to reconstruct. I imagine birthing her was agonizing. I imagine I was probably thinking something foolish and common, something like never wanting another child after her. I like to imagine that I imagined these things, but all this is uncertain. As it is now, I can not hope to recreate those feelings. Her birth is becoming a memory, erasing itself from my mind, erasing her. I try to hold onto her, but she begins to slip from my grasp, she becomes air.

A sob slips through my mouth. I am bent over, balancing on the edge of the seat. A child is the greatest luxury I can hope for now. Janine’s success is nothing but a testament to my own failure. The feeling of emptiness is crushing, soul-sucking. Soul. I wonder if I still have one. Emptiness has become such a common state of being, it is hard to believe I may hold anything inside this vessel of mine. The night sky is empty tonight, the moon’s only companions are dustings of stray clouds.

After the birth, my birth, they, the nurses, laid her on my chest. Skin to skin contact was recommended, they said. Then the nurse droned on about unnecessary medical facts, but she was nothing but background noise. My focus was on her, my Hannah. I know I may be coming off as hypocritical. I refuse to give you a name because it brings the chaos of fact into this story of mine, but I refuse to erase her. She is already disappearing, I am trying to hold onto her for as long as I can. I repeated her name a million times as if I could speak her into existence in that gilded cage of mine, even for a moment. Hannah. Hannah. HannahHannahHannahHann-

I’m sorry that you have to hear me cry so much. She is the most painful loss, more so than Luke. It is a fight to keep her alive. When the three of us are one again, she will remember me. I will not have become a missing person to her. This hope, amongst others, keeps me alive. I have become scattered. My hands tightly clamp around my mouth. I can not cause a disturbance. I quietly choke on her memory. I imagine dying.

I remember learning about supernovas while I was still in school. A supernova occurs upon the death of certain types of stars. The star’s brightness greatly increases due to an explosion that ejects most of its’ mass. In Latin, “nova” means new. Astronomically, nova refers to a temporary bright new star. Temporary because the brightness only lasts for a couple of months at most before the star suddenly dims, dead. I wish to die like a supernova.

I have to compose my self. I have to live. I have to meet with the Commander.

My footsteps are as light as air as I walk through the dark, narrow hallways. I think of myself as nothing. I am a floating cloud.

Hannah does not exist in my mind.

I do not allow her to.