What would it have been like? If I had sacrificed myself to become someone else.

There were, perhaps, at least two different people I could have become, once upon a time. But at the same time, I could never. Call it attachment, stubbornness, self-belief, the sin of pride. Life told me that the way forward was to conform. To die. But I simply walked away.

The girl in the tower did not choose to stay, but nor did she choose to return. Is her leap of faith an act of ascendance toward the stars? Or a return to the earth from whence we came? I wish I could be in the place with no more ungranted wishes, but I am cursed to seek meaning, to seek happiness, to grasp at completion, as if it carries any weight at all.