The world always told her she wanted too much. Craved too much.

Too much attention, too much certainty, too much touch. Did weird things a lot.

They said love wasn’t supposed to feel like a claim or a promise or even forceful, but that it should be soft and open and easy.

But what she longed for was weight—the solid assurance that someone would stand in front of her when the world turned cruel, someone who would say mine not as a command, but as a vow.

A promise to protect and loyalty that transcends thru time.

She learned early to hide that part of herself. High school romances collapsed the moment she admitted she liked being held too tightly. To be told she was their's. To make hickie's on her was gross. College partners called her “intense,” “clingy,” or “strange.” To stupid in the bedroom. By twenty-five, she had stopped trying to explain it. She worked, went home, read stories about impossible loves, and whispered to herself that wanting to be chosen completely wasn’t a crime.

That wanting to be accepted as she was with all quirks or preferences, shouldn't have to be a wish much less a dream. But a reality, yet unfortunately life was cruel that way.

Then the night of the storm came—rain tearing the sky apart, headlights bleeding white on the wet road. She was driving home, her phone buzzing with another apology from a man who said she was “too much.” She didn’t see the truck until it was already on top of her.

As she looked to the sky, with a numbness in her that long stopped caring for anyone but the stories she read. She muttered "Finally...i...*cough*...thank...u...god..*cough*" ' for ending my suffering.' Are her last thoughts as she closes her eyes, with a calmness she never felt before. 

When she opened her eyes again, the air smelled of old wood and candle wax. A child’s cry echoed from somewhere nearby. Her body felt smaller, softer, heavier and her heartbeat wasn’t the only one she could sense.

But a crying sound came from her right.

She had died.

And yet she hadn’t.