I woke up one day to a strange sound. Or a lack of a sound. I can never be sure. I looked inside my mind; I had not thought to check there since I attached this mirror to my face. Where once there was industry, there is now cobwebs and abandon; cogs and wheels broken and rusted. A dusty old shade was put haphazardly over a window that once was open, letting in the spring. And I asked myself, “What happened to the people? The people who I used to know?” And then I found a note left on a splintered work table that read, ‘You never knew us, you never used us, you never loved us. Now we are gone.’

What happened to the stars that I used to watch dance in the sky? A sky I thought would always be there, exactly the way it was? They fell towards oblivion, towards salvation. And I realized how much people and stars have in common, and how little either of them can be trusted.

One time I met a girl online who brought me to doorways I never had heard of before. Music softly played in the background as we danced through a tangled web of confused adolescent emotions. I had never met her, I knew nothing about her. But back then, that was enough to fall in love.

It was so easy then to see yourself in a pair of eyes, to go home and write a poem and know that the feeling would always be there, to be so confident in a future with a stranger. A song could be the first line in a book written by fallen authors who existed for the sole purpose of recording your life and the love that you felt. The music could pick you up and place you in a land high above the clouds where every wish came true. Where the simple act of loving someone made you soul mates, where expectations became reality. Where imagination harmonized with that love you felt. Where you were comfortable with the knowledge that there is only one true love for every person in the world, and the confidence that THIS is the person, THIS is the time, THIS is that love; your life thus far was only one path leading you to a garden of infinite possibilities, with endless paths that you no longer need walk alone. You heard the music and knew that love was only a note away.

When you are a kid, every dream becomes a reality. Every sunset is a gift given to you. Every raindrop is one more step toward a clear horizon. Those stories you read were just chapters in one big book about you and your life, proclaiming your daring, your purpose in life, your immortality. But then you meet someone who changes your life forever, and suddenly the writing on the pages starts to fade. Eventually the pages become blank, waiting for the next unsuspecting hopeless romantic to start writing again.

I woke up a few days ago to an empty house. There was no sound of breathing or heartbeats to keep mine self aware, and the sounds of tiny feet running around the house were only an echo of how the world seemed as if it was supposed to be. The music had stopped playing so loudly. It was quiet. Quiet and empty like the sadness of a tomb, like the tears of a fallen tree, like the flames of a falling star. I tried to look out the window, but the glass had become cracked and tainted. I tried to walk out the door, but it was bolted shut from the outside. I saw my feet walk through the crack between the door frame and the floor. They had errands of their own, responsibilities that I knew I must fulfill, but was too broken to do so. So I sat feetless and alone in my silent house and fell asleep, only to realize that I had never been awake in the first place.

Have you ever seen a girl walking down the street and felt in your deepest heart of hearts that if only she would see you, if only she would look up and notice you, you would work up the courage to talk to her? Then you would find that you were both falling madly in love with one another, and suddenly you would wake up in a happy home next to your beautiful wife, on your way to your perfect job, waiting for the world to stop turning long enough to settle into quiet retirement surrounded by a loving family. All because a girl stopped to talk to you. All because you dared to start a conversation. But then all that comes out of thinking about talking to her as you see her walking down the street is you sitting on your bike outside of her house at one in the morning, staring at the moon and wondering if after you both have grown up and moved away, she would one night look up at that moon and remember a boy who she never knew existed.

It used to be so easy to fall in love. The answers were so clear, the feeling so powerful that there could be no questioning it. There could be no defying it, no escaping it. Love was love. It was that simple. But what happens when you look back and realize that you have never known anything about love? What do you do then?

One day I woke up and looked inside my mind and found a note from the people who once lived there telling me that they had left because I had not loved them. One day I woke up and saw that I was alone. One day I sat down, looked back on my life and questioned everything. Everything. I wonder where love will take me this time? On second thought, screw it. I don’t want to know after all.