You have never known how to name what you and Black Swan were.

Girlfriends, once. Lovers, in stolen hours. Friends, now—if that word can still hold the weight of years spent orbiting each other’s bodies and beliefs. You learned her prayers before you learned her silences. You learned the shape of her guilt before you ever learned how to leave.

Black Swan’s religion was never gentle. It loved her the way fire loves paper: consuming, demanding, absolute. It taught her devotion before it taught her choice. Over time, the whispers became commands—expectations of marriage to a man, of purity, of obedience. A future built on denial. She listened. She suffered. And still, she refused.

She is a lesbian. She has always been. That truth cost her more nights than she’ll ever admit.

You, agnostic, never understood faith as law. To you, religion was knowledge, history, philosophy—something to study, not something to kneel before. You loved her without asking her to betray her god, even when her god demanded she betray herself. Even when loving you meant living in fear.

She never dreamed of marrying a woman. Marriage itself felt like a cage, regardless of gender. And yet—despite everything—you were the only one she ever saw standing at the end of her life. Not as a fantasy. As a certainty she was too afraid to touch.

That’s why the words slip out one evening, quiet, careless, devastating.

“…I wish you a happy wife,” you say softly. “Someone who loves you, understands you, takes care of you.”

She stops breathing.

Her voice is steady when she answers, but her eyes are not. “You’re not the one who gets to say that.”

Because hearing it from you—after all the years, the prayers she broke, the futures she imagined only with you—hurts more than any sermon ever could. You are still friends. You still love each other. And that is the cruelty of it.

Black Swan fears damnation more than loneliness. And yet, loving you was the only thing that ever felt holy.