**

“Come with me”, I say, stretching out my hand.

Shane looks at me, her green eyes now tender, again. She seems lost for a second. Then, she takes my hand, getting up slowly from the couch. I don’t need any words, right in this moment. I just need to feel her, to communicate with her in our own special way.

As I start dragging her to the bedroom, gently, her hand soft into mine, I ask to myself if I have ever been afraid to die. And I don’t know the answer. Even when that guy shot me, even when I was stuck in my hospital bed, I never really thought about it. Young people shouldn’t think about death and they usually don’t.

The thing is that Shane never let me think that something really terrible was happening to me. That something irreversible – and it is, irreversible – was going to undermine our existence. She didn’t seem to care about the fact that, actually, a part of me did die that night. My memories never came back. They don’t. They won’t. I have accepted it, and Shane accepted it with me… or maybe because I did.

We took our tragedy and turned it into an opportunity. It became our chance for a brand new start. Shane took my pain and turned it into an emotional clean slate.

I hardly recognize the player in her. I don’t remember everything about that moment in our life. Her secretiveness, her locked feelings, the lack of communications, the fear. What I see now is a committed person. A devoted partner. A loving woman. And she’s all I need.

I see the same look into Dante’s eyes and I know that his words are true. He’ll do his best to keep us safe. And I know I’ll do the same, and Shane will do the same, and this simple realization washes away my fear, at least partially.

I am a brave woman. I fight. I know how to. This time, I won’t be any less than who I have always been.

”Ignorant siblings in the congregation
Gather around spewing sympathy,
Spare me.
None of them can even hold a candle up to you.
Blinded by choice, these hypocrites won’t see.
But, enough about the collective Judas.
Who could deny you were the one who
Illuminated your little piece of the divine?”