Asghar Abbas's Blog - Posts Tagged "2017"

Drowning, only without water. Only without me. Sometimes without words or worlds. After a while, you get used to it. You realize you can drown almost without anything. Drowning, only me.

You don't need water to drown, only memory. Soon, you come to know you don't even need water to breathe.

It's disconcerting, to say the least. It wouldn't be far-fetched to say, I've had dreams before.
I've had nightmares before. But I have never had dreams of nightmares before. How can I get the nightmares to stop following me if I remained ever hopeful? Unbidden, without any cause or reason, I remain filled with hope.

Frayed and olden, the ship was sinking. That's the only thing I understood. Did it matter?
No, not really. Only that this was a dream. Was it worth squeezing out of that worn-out oculus? Hardly. I was dreaming. That was definite. Watery as it was, I could feel it. I was aware of that. I was aware, but not woken yet. I wasn't a moken in this chapter. I thought I could handle it. But this was only a dream. It's only a life, only one life. I was the bullet on the ground. Wasted but not used. Through it all though, I could feel the weight of this dream, pressing down, willingly I went into that cold, cold void.

It was unavoidable to wake up from it now. And quite frankly, why would I want to do that anyway?

I turned without turning to watch the ship sink silently beside me. I wasn't stoic. I wasn't mute. I was only human. The oaken ship was right next to me, compared to me, unlike me it wasn't here.

Even in this dream, I was watery enough to coax myself out of my own skin and follow this song all the way home.

I wasn't dead, but I didn't care. The truth was I wasn't home. The fantasy was I wasn't going home.

I felt so strange, I was a stranger in my own dream; my sense of loss amazed me even now in that moment, at that moment. I was sketching all kinds of wrong things right in front of me, as much as I was being sketched in that stray moment.

As I floated beside the ship, I saw I was not drowning—merely floating on the water’s surface. My face was wet, I could feel that, but it wasn't rainwater or spume. It felt like blood when in actuality it wasn't. Even though it was the other liquid, still, because of that I could finally accept all the designs in the finality of this loss and that the sea was final.

Then the waves of a darker ocean jerked me forward, carrying me forth from the depths of the green-blue ocean, propelling me upward to the sky in a moment made drunken from the fall of men. And from my own fall as well. I might as well add that, and I will.

That was all well and good. This was my fall in the fall. I was finally falling. My hair remained yellow in this retelling, even though the yolkish sun was not.

Then I was falling freely in a free fall that wasn't free at all. I dropped from the sky, plummeting down to the bottom of this wet moment. I couldn't get my hair, dirty and blonde, out of my eyes. But it was the intangible part of me that remained unwashed in this verse. I plunged suddenly and deeply. Everything hurt, then my body pitched over the edge that wasn't there, tumbling toward the ground that was.

My mind was screaming. I guess I was too. We all do, my kind, in our own way. We may flail a lot, but we're not frail not even a little bit. But who's there to hear us and wake us up from this. Who responds to us, comes to our succor other than winter. And it's only fall. What's September when you are the one wearing this riding hood red in color inside this eatery that's not a bakery. I am looking up at the rafters, where are all the ravens at, I am at the wrong rookery.

Sinking. Sink. Sinking. Sipping. Sip. I was half fish, but I wasn't swimming away. Alas, there were no oceans between us, oh Amy Lee. Oh, how were you to know that?

The water is fickle, but do we accept that? Learn from it? We are muddy molasses, too stubborn to be the darkened smudges around the stars.

Little else was there for me to do than to glance down. So I looked down at the ground rushing up eagerly to meet me. I welcomed its concrete embrace with open arms.

Out of nowhere, an enormous building manifested itself in the gray. It shot right up in a second that took some god forgotten somewhere to regret all of his decisions, as I continued to plunge down the skeletal building, dropping, descending by it.

The speed, that moment of loss was too gigantic to be dismissive, yet it was. I looked at it as I went down and down I went. The building resembled a skyscraper that somehow reached up beyond the pinking clouds. It looked a little like the Chrysler building. What did it matter? Did it mean I was here when I was actually here? I don't know. I was far away, homeless in that stillest of moments, where all the horses are golden. Where are those golden horses now?

If we were playing Russian roulette or the seasonal game of clichés, which I had mastered, I'd say I was leaving all my troubles behind. Escaping even the sunlight of yore. In that moment, the wind felt good, so good. At that moment, I could pray for an end. Again and again.

Suddenly
Something

There was a flicker. A whisper. A flutter of wings. No cawing in the dell. Where were the ravens? There weren't any unkindness around anymore, no murder. Was there a murderer? In all of this, I wouldn't know. A trill. A whistle for all the woodland creatures to gather around me. But there weren't any forests left around here. It was in a sense a moment of lucidity in otherwise a dreamlike state. Objectless, a tasteless frieze. But it was a false awakening. A perfect storm of helplessness. All the dinosaurs were good here.

Suddenly there was Aeron, visible in his Phantom of the Opera mask he wore on my seventeenth birthday. But then he was gone just like when he was last seen on the roof of his apartment. Aeron who all the dried palettes had claimed him to be their own. He in return claimed to be a painter, but it was me who had abandoned him like an imperfect painting.

I knew this was a dream. I knew then I was sleeping. It was a dream within a dream within a kiss, that Morpheus was dreaming and Poe was alive. But Morpheus was dead wrong about a dream; mine. It was never my dream.

I had passed the building and quite possibly was at the bottom by now. When I glanced up all I could see were the wet silhouettes with their guns drawn on that skyscraper’s roof—looking down at me. In the originality of the clouds, I saw visages broken with malevolence peering down at me. Charter your way to me now, boys. All the charts and the maps are ruined. How do you like me now, Mr. Joker?

I was still hurtling through space in between the years, going down headfirst. That narrow place between mayhem and harmony. So it is possible that a somersault and a cartwheel in mid-air was involved in this revamped stop-loss, that's about to be turned into a winter song.

I froze right there aerially only for a second though and then I continued to drop. For a little while there, I was aerial in a moment that was already airy.

I turned to look down. I was still sinking, slowly going down down down. Soon things would be inverted. My face would be unrecognizable from the sidewalk that I was about to meet. I was thinking about detours of life, twists of fate by the time I was fully in a sunken place. Try peeling me away from this story now.

It's funny. I don't have a language any more. My accent is mostly gone, but not completely. I am a girl without a country. In dreams and its bleak reality, I am a woman colorless. I don't have my own weight here to pin down anything, fleeting or otherwise. What I have spun is from the web of my spindly thoughts.

Shades of my dreams are colorless and I remain guileless. Whatever I am in this odd little reimagining, I belong to the moors. For once, they are mine.

In the center of the city of stone, I am set adrift. I am left to throb within the crumbling tabby facades, flaky ideas like I am the city's dead heartbeat. A Stone City unnecessarily walled in by the brittle moon. Much like the walled city I left behind and the one I didn't take with me.

In the crook of my arms, pale untold universes were telling a story of their own. In the hollows of my arms, resided a mellow sun. In the cockle of my lively heart, I am ashamed, wandering, wondering, helpless against its own nature like a gullible wolf and a guilty sheep.

I need to be free right now, more than I have the need to open my eyes into this world and reject my own. I need to truly let go, be gone. In order to hold on, I must really let go and disappear into my own mind.

Sometimes that's enough, even though not worth the sacrifice the time makes. But other times, the history of the rain and a memory of a fish are enough.

The city I am dwelling in, for now, is about to be painted for war. Why? Well, it's simple. This place, a city of a million heartbeats and a billion dreams. Well, those dreams are not dead yet, are you. Unburied, one by one they all must go sour. It's a fun task, someone ought to do it, why not me?

In this violent shade, I offer myself. Why? Look at my face, look at it, the paint is already there glistening.

Then I looked around. At once I felt defeated. I needed too much of myself to rebuild here. And I just can't. I felt so lost in my own story. What's even more haunting, I am nothing like my story. My biggest woe in this renewed lie is I don't know what is fiction and what is fictitious. Even if this kiss of fiction is mine, still, I cannot separate myself from it.

I am left grappling with the burning question that keeps burning like a little red lung; who am I in all this. What am I, which part of me is the myth, and which part is the moth?

In this vast emptiness, on this speck of nothing, am I nothing but a sillage of nothingness? Am I a dream, or am I dreaming? Am I death or am I time?

I know, I am the consciousness preceding matter. What I really wanted to know is am I more than just a walking ossuary filled with sad, sad bones. I know I am full of suspense and comedy. Nothing is rubbing up against me, not even imagination, my untouched skin remained unrepentant and inanimate. My sense of humor is what is making the Fates laugh aloud, those nasty old crones, I am hilarious, my humor is killing me. But no one human is laughing. Only me.

Up till now, all the other worlds that had been swirling in my mouth started to rot away. But as misplaced as I am here, at least I am using my mouth right. The way it ought to be used. By denying the alternate possibilities, that's how.

I am not waiting for change, I am not. So. In the middle of the middle of my nowhere, I know I must start anew. I am not waiting, but I have to begin de novo. I do. That's the way, it has to be. That's my exit. Mostly because I exist. It is no longer a sin to deny myself.

Abruptly, the reddened sky spat me out, releasing me, and I fell again. My blue trench coat aflutter flapping in the wind. As I dropped into a warmth that stopped a heart. But who impelled who is the one who pulled the trigger.

I woke up with a jolt that was painful. My eyes snapped open, my breath shallow. I woke up with all too familiar disorientation and as usual, with a dry mouth — my Persian was on my back.

Staying on, he started to rub against my neck and purred. But surely something else was astir, bestirring me.

I had awakened other things while waking up myself. I woke up in a half-empty, one-bedroom apartment to a haphazard mess that was my life. In the shadows, among the skulls and bones were my knick-knacks scattered throughout the room. Books and clothes were strewn across the dull hardwood floor mingling with the dust from my body, along with the dirt of something else, in layers quite unimaginable.

I woke up to this view in the catacombs as I tried living inside my shell. And, what a nightmare it was, waking up.

I was up but not getting up, looking around, taking in my life, such as it had become. I exhaled the demons and laid back down on the pillows. Settling back in, I knew I wasn't alone, but I wouldn't settle for that. We weren't alone, I couldn't escape that. Breathe in and out. Cold ink in my veins making me feel a part of myself again.

Vestiges of yesterday lingered on like lingering thoughts, all those erstwhile aspirations still fallow, still there, the hope still freshening. Unlike my breath, which was anything but fresh.

To be fair, I didn't create this mess. If I told the truth right now, did that make it acceptable? This mess had created me, a mess created a mess of botched paints for once, and I thanked it for the delicious disarray.

I was the Frankenstein's Monster in this unfair song sans the Doctor himself. So little choice I had other than to reemerge as a voyager and come here. So I did.

We all hope to leave our endless stories behind from whence we come from. We hope to find ourselves in new places yearning to be in stories that would make us feel a little less lonely with ourselves.

Here the cats come in. But the cats don't remind us we need other humans, we do. Cats would never hurt us like that. They are just enough. Though I did my cat a huge disservice by naming him Atlantis in a moment of sheer stupidity, with complete lack of self-awareness, without even an ounce of irony, the dramatic kind.

Don't laugh, I regret it as it is. As I do too this too meta moment. And yet, I named him Atlantis but I am who wanted to vanish. If this was happening now instead of now, I'd go with Odin. You can laugh now. I know I am laughing, and laughing, not knowing it's not funny anymore. If it ever were.

We move forward, never backward despite going back sometimes. But still, traces of the past hangs in the air like stale poetry. And here I am immobile, lying on the bed not made out of thistles. Lying still, not moving skewered between the steampunk dreams I want to have and my nonlinear reality.

How to hold all of that inside myself? How to keep all this contained in my heart. All of this would stop my heart in a heartbeat. And yet, this day is heartening even though it'll have a sad ending, that wouldn't involve death by the end of it. It began that way, with Death of Reason, because there is no reason. It's all about the endings, isn't it? But I can't gamble on that. On my cat, sure, but not on this. Well, it's a good thing my heart is already hocked then. It's much unneeded, a bit overwrought, just a little. I don't know why it bothered to beat at this point or at all, this mechanical heart of mine, a false heart playing me false. Why? Well, why indeed. I am breaking my own heart trying to hold in so much of myself? Why do we do that, really. No, really. Tell me. I wanna know, show me, really. Really, really.

As I lay there, not dying but not alive either. On which bed though. What? As I exist solely on this plane, my thoughts started to turn into sodden whorls. Something was glowing on my skin chafing me, making me feel I already knew what I knew. All manner of things were becoming very clear to me. This blemish I could endorse, it was very endearing. Because I understood it. I could handle the dawn. Bring it on.

I could see my breath frosting over in front of me. My face glossed over with sleep, streaked with whey texture not quite there. I hadn't even opened my mouth to yawn or anything, but I could feel all the cicadas trying to crawl their way out. I'd want them to come out into this life all right. I still held such notions dear to my dreary heart.

Of course, they won't make it out of this alive, none of us will, or even in one piece. But why would I despair? The birth of something that's bound to die is just so beautiful.

The maze of my thoughts had swallowed me whole. I was nowhere and everywhere. Something was nuzzling my neck, startling me slightly and I do not use the word slightly.
I twisted around panicking, but it was only Atlantis nudging me with his head. He wanted his breakfast. He was doing all but pointing to his mouth.

Meh. I'll get up when I get up. Then I thought I heard something. I was about to dismiss it as white noise but, no. A rustling sound was coming from somewhere.

It was more than the hungry ocean raging inside my head. Atlantis had perked up too, he was looking around looking rather uncomfortable, making me feel more anxious.

See, I wasn't imagining things again. Atlantis wouldn't talk but he damn sure could see. His head was making these jerky circular movements like he was mimicking a shadow he was trying hard to catch.

Something else was in here besides the two of us. I was sure of it. As sure I was that this was real. We weren't alone, we never are.

A hoary presence was looking at me. I felt that. Something other than my cat was staring at me.

I tried turning on my side, and maybe I did. All I know is-

Unwittingly, I couldn't move. I tried but couldn't. It felt like something heavy was holding me down.

Maybe I was still sleeping. Maybe I had fallen asleep again and I didn't realize that. Maybe I was the forest, or in one. Maybe it was just the weight of my regrets, warm and nebulous, the direct result of decisions of others that I couldn't avoid. Some escapist I am.

Whatever the case, I was being made to listen to something not so dissimilar to me. Indiscernible, sure but it sure did disarm me.

Then the unknown was whispering to me. It wasn't an earworm this time around, keep it in mind. Sibilant suggestions humming in my ear. Burning me further, even though my mind was already aflame.

Some of the suggestions I even liked, felt an urge to carry them out. Aghast, I glanced at Atlantis nervously, expecting him to be horrified. But his expression was impassive. He didn't look that impressed. He wasn't interested in the mundane anymore, the intrusive presence didn't interest him any longer.

Whatever that was there in the room with us, my cat wouldn't let it make a move against me. That much was clear.

This is why we must place our full faith in cats completely and not in people. People are disappointing. It's in the presence of others we feel less. We came from each other, but we were never made to live together. We gather and we move on. When that doesn't happen, we become aggressive. Our kind is dreck and dross, wholly lacking.
Unlike the one-time gods that I love so much.

Cats would never put us down, go against us. Make fun of us. Take us in jest. Trivialize themselves like we do with bullshit.
They would never brutalize us. They wouldn't turn on us on a whim, betray us. They wouldn't love us, but cats would never judge us.

I'd trust a cat over a human any given time, every single time. Cats are my friends, like all my demons. Just, my demons tap into me. They use me to fuel their pleasures. The facepaint they are using copiously is from the jars I had set aside for myself, but that's fine in this take.

Things are strange, it's always the outlines of the abstract that wanted to be a permanent part of me. Come inside and implode within me. Always looking for a way in. To get inside. What must I do?

Forfeit? Maybe it's so much easier to just give in. Give up. After all, we have already given up. There is something so satisfying about heroes' surrender. When your heroes fail, they do more than just let you down, they let you go too. It's a good thing then that the defeat of saints is the only thing my palate can handle these days. Be a good little liar, and say it's true.

There is something utterly gratifying about marring any beauty we come across. Maybe because we all resent it. We were never meant to keep the beautiful things around us. That's why we tarnish what we can destroy what we could in our wake.

That's why men abuse women. That's why women let them. They’d rather sully everything as if it was their choice when it never was.

We don't deserve beautiful things. We don't deserve our mothers. This is not our home. All the wolves are gone. Like my accent and I am truly identityless now.

Why should we fall for heroes, when it's the ritual of their failure that made us believe in them in the first place.

It's not like we don't know any better. We know their end. We've seen it. Seen to that they reach the bloodied end that was written on the skin of their lies.

But we are helpless against nature and against our own. We are all looking for magic that is not there.

I don't get it, get out, but don't mind my confusion. It's difficult but not hard. It's so simple. We all know what we must do. Why does everyone make it so complicated, when we should just embrace the shame. We ought to be doing that right now. Embrace the shame, embrace it.

The fact is, too few villains and too many heroes is the reason for the shape we are in. Be a good girl now, brutalize and then beautify yourself, you little beast.

Then I quickly interjected myself, hoping to explain why Alice was full of malice in this. I wanted to deemphasize that the White Rabbit was really innocent of her.

What to do. Sigh. Despite hanging in the balance, I felt like a ghostwriter writing something that's not mine. Weaving something I am not familiar with. I never built this. Half that is still me and the other half that is something else, aswirl

Look. no one asks to be born into an opinion, we inherit that, I get that. Even if we are stuck in that, how do we squeeze out of it. Because we sure are squeezed out of time.

The thing is, no matter how much I rewrite this, rearrange everything all over, over and over again, it seems like I am the one who is haunting the ghost here.

But then again, I am the ghost who can ghost this story. Yellow and fading. At the bottom of this brittle paper, residual human touches can still be felt. All we are left with are the caresses of ghosts. That is if we are lucky or stupid. I don't know which. What I do know is.

I know how it is done and this is not it.

But sooner or later, one way or another, somehow, a fable will be told.

Not equal to this dying night, I could move again, yah! But we didn't have genuine freedom, not yet anyway. We wouldn't really be free until and unless we stopped being slaves to what our fathers had mixed into this earth.

If I admit that the human fallacy, quite formal, makes the creed cold, will you accept that it is human error that makes it warm?

Since I was able to, I turned around and laid on my back again. Yep, you're looking at the master of the supine. I burrowed into my pillows and exhaled already exhausted. I might have sighed again.

Now before I open my eyes into this world and blacken my surroundings again. Now, now, before I get up to feed my cat. And you know my head, cause if you wanna feed your mind, you gotta feed your mouth first.

Before I do all that, I'll just say this. I have learned the hard way since my time spent roaming around in the heartland of the Franks, but I learned it anyway and now I know. There are no monsters here, only men.

But I wouldn't let it bother me. It's not embarrassing, it's just I know better now.

Okay, now I really have to get up and wring some of the spilled blood from history and out of my own history. Teehee. So in order to get going, in the quietest part of my mind, I fully accept this day. I am fatal that way. Now I am more than equal to this dying light.

This new relationship with a familial sun notwithstanding, the moon hasn't broken me in quite yet, don't you worry, and not that bruised by the starlight, I can stand up and walk into the lives around my life. My entire face twisted into an ugly smile at this prelapsarian joy, that's bound to happen. Everything felt so imminent.

If the dead comedians could survive in this city, so could I. There are always different narratives at play of course, but I felt this was the real story behind these words.

All I can give you is no matter what, we continue, we go on. That's neither a good thing or bad, nor is it permanent. And we don't need to know any more than that. We go on, we keep moving forward, we make do. Until we are no more. Then we become what we were before we were rudely pulled out of an empty void and yanked into existence- at peace.

That's how we carve a legacy that's all our own. This is how a Cheshire grin is fashioned out of these sad, sad bones. You gotta give something to the dragons to gnaw on. 'cause I am done with chewing up the silence.

Okay look, nobody earns an ending. But sometimes, sometimes the endings we get are a little happier.

But even so, no I am not done yet, I really should have struggled more to stop it from happening. But a part of me wanted to be here.

We are not without loss here. I know that. Although, we didn't lose anything we didn't have. What we lost, the time gained, the death is in the trees. We're all at a loss here. But ultimately that's the hysteria of living and eventually, we're going to have to deal with the sickness of being alive.

We don't exist, we are stranded on a rock. Then we are not. That may be, but we are the true victors here. What we possess is not valued in money.

Shameful confession time. It is in the wee hours of the morning all the possibilities seem possible, but keep in mind and keep me too, that it's the possibilities that kill us.

It was with that possibility in mind, I finally got up. I got some canned cat food for At to eat up. In the mediocrity of that moment, what I was looking for at the end, found me in the end.

Finally, an ending figured me out.

Somewhere, an alarm was going off and something jumped on the bed.

The night was unusually hot. She was sweaty but she didn't dirty the ruffled pillows underneath her head. She had dirtied everything else that she could as she slept on and on. The dust from her skin was quite dirtying things nowhere near her, somewhere else, something else, and certainly not anywhere on her person. For she wasn't a person at that moment, just not yet anyway.

No, no, no. She wasn't the cause or the culprit, just or otherwise. She refused to be a cure. She didn't impel any reasons. So she wouldn't cushion any blows. Sometimes, she'd do a lot of blow, and blow stuff up or just blow people. She was an addict, addicted to things she couldn't possibly describe. Or tell apart.

But she wasn't a compulsion nor was she compulsory. She was. She was a cornucopia of sounds lost in places history forgot. She was in those books the writers no longer wanted to write. What's funny is, she is older than any recorded history, Sumerian or more recent less accurate one, but she's already been written about. She certainly wasn't a curse but she was most definitely cursed. She was simply curious. Since she had already killed her cat called Curiosity, she was even more curious. She was curious. She was so curious about herself. And there was no one here to wake her up from her sleep.

So no. No, no, no. The pillows under her head were stuffed with the helplessness of the day, all that swollen hope, and the possibilities of the night. All the goodness of the good nightmares. Restless, she murmured, turning in her sleep. Her pillows were stained from her bad dreams. Spindly and liquidy, they tumbled, rolling off the soft, fluffed bump. An absence of dull dreams gleamed on the pillows. The surface of the pillowcases drenched in the sheen of the words written in different places. From other inky places. For she wanted different things now. One of the things she wanted was her own sleep, dusty from the particles that were glowing in her dirt, taking root. But of course, at the peak of shadows, she would abandon everything and leave. Leave it all behind, and leave everyone else that hadn't already left. Leave. Leaf. Lief.

She had already left somewhere for nowhere.

But she wasn't leaving her sleep ever. Little else, she could do other than finally accept the final moon here.

Following lines shouldn't be anywhere near Game of Thrones. I sincerely feel Martin would never put them in his Song of all Songs. These feel so anachronous.

So I put the blame firmly on HBO, DD, showrunners, and TV writers, they done messed up.

So, without further ado:

2015: From Season 5:

"You want a good girl, but you need the bad pussy."

This beauty had rendered me speechless when I first witnessed it. It was so egregiously BAD. And not in a fun way. This one for sure takes the cake. It was so bad. Like what the fuck was that even. Even hack writers wouldn't write this. For a show with so much production value and previously good writing, it was in very poor taste, not only that but felt really really out of place as well. Connotations here are just so modern. No one would talk like that in a fantasy world, even in a world filled with Dragons and Draugrs.

2016: From Season 6:

"It always seems a bit abstract, doesn't it - other people dying."

Beautiful line, such raw power behind these words, so full of meaning. Amazing. It really hits you hard. But again, abstract, too modern. But what amazing words.

2017: From season 7:

"All right. ... Talk about my father if you want, tell me that's the attitude that got him killed."

Love this season, this episode, and Jon. But attitude, really? Um, no, nope, not happening.

These words really took me out of a show, where Ice zombies walk.

Am I missing this show? Around this time of the year? Really, how can you tell?

I am just nitpicking, love this show. HBO make more, chop chop. You like money, right?

It's better to let go than to recreate. It's always so much better to create something new, especially when you are not in anywhere new, place or mental state. When it's all the same, you don't have to be. And yeah, I know. I look the same as I did when she told me she thought she loved me. I am still the same, still look the same. Looking at her now, with Sigur Rós warning me in the background, is making me so nostalgic for her. As she is now, she's reminding me of the girl she used to be; never real but always magical. So full of things that dissolved in the air. Though I'll say this though. The red of her mouth looks so unfamiliar now, seems unknown, feels empty and moves nothing in me. Time has distorted and squeezed her mouth into something unbearable, I hardly recognize it. But her breath is still familiar, still feels like her. Monstrous, ruining women, weakening men, and making all the clowns happy. Her torn lips no longer telling the story of the rain, but the memory of the fish lingers on. She is still moving on, not dour, leaving now. Heading full tilt in just one direction. Where could that be. A place where she dreams about her reflection, but she dreamt that too much. She's burned out now, her burnt fingers aching something else in her. Where else is she going to meet me other than the Graveyard of the Trees. It's there I'll give her what remains of tonight. In exchange of the spiral, spindly and liquid, I will give her the night.

Another February, another goodbye. Okay, yeah sure once more but with music! The Ostara kind, you know what I am talking about, it’s only fitting. Sure why not, it was March just a few seconds ago.

But of course, that was before I knew you. So is this. All this, yes. Though tea first, I’d prefer it that way. In fact, I insist you insist on doing that. You brew it, pour it, cup the mug, cradle it keep it warm, keep it interesting, hold the ranks, you watch, I’ll drink it.

It is my turn to take advantage of you. So chop chop, get a move on. Put on the stone kettle on that wood stove. That tea is not going to make itself. Don’t rock the boat, watch your fingers, just get on. Get on the boat. This moon reminds me of home, looking at it could be about that, it is reminding me of the ruins that didn't ruin us. But the ruinous sun, damn the sun looks like it is a little in love with you. Still? It is burning just a little harder for you. Damn the sun, the shadows are thickening. They are unfurling. They are readable and stark, but unforgiving.

Tell me something; what was the point of anointing the moon as a knight for this night, when it won’t come at you. For you. It Follows. You. Not because you are mobile and it is unmoving where ever it is. Tell me, I really wanna know, though something tells me you won't be telling me anything. But when you move, it moves along with you, coming down to you, coming for you, following you. And I? Well, I’d rather look for the sun. But the moon is never too far away from the likes of us, burning between us like a random thought.

It’s raw and tender. Don’t touch it. Haha, you sneaky little schemer, you don’t have to show me the way, that way inside that way. I quite agree with your moon that bears your name, I concur.

You are still one of the most beautiful things I didn’t see. Can’t unsee your form, though you are formless now. The girl you were, reflecting the girl you are now. Though there are no mirrors here, cracked or otherwise. The glass that’s still between our worlds remembers the touch of your paintbrushes, your bizarre strokes, the not so gleaming glass remembers, all of them. You are still a skilled painter. Why wouldn’t you be?

In this static age, you are the only chalk artist left. Your little red tongue is still red. Stick it out. We are not there yet. Not yet. Keep talking even if you are silent. Want this. Other words evoke other emotions but all the words are about our home.

Though this is hardly your suicide note. I have them and they love me. Words. Brittle but words all the same. All the black sails are up. What can I say, when this started, this was about you. Stay. Let me insult you. Remember how the mermaids had loved me last fall. They did things of quite another nature to you, do you remember that? Not feeling so gifted now, are you? I really don’t want to imagine you again. But. I can imagine you breathing underwater. I can still see your skin under all the covers, slimy, grimy, and aglow. Your eye held a look of otherworldliness then. Your hair awash with spent moonlight, you head moving. Your thighs gleaming with different thoughts. You were begrimed as a whole graffiti; stuffed with too many of my feelings. Which is good, I no longer feel anything. Numb as you were when you were alive.

I licked something of yours, a memory, fleeting but yours. Your fingers still taste of you. I find that to be funny because that couldn’t possibly be, not after all this time in that darkened tomb. All the bandages we had wrapped you in are moldy now, rotting away, peeling off your body of lies. All those ribbons cut from the last damask robe you wore are corrosive now. It is no longer any fun, unwrapping you is crude now. We don’t possess the Rosetta Stone to make any sense of you.

But the toxicity of your ink is still there on your fingers and it’s heavy quite like you. Just like your dreams your ink has weight. I miss your sunless weight though you are weightless now. Where you are now though, you are not on any diner’s menu. The safety of your womb isn’t an option now. Oh sublime fehu, I can’t breathe. Stolen. You are an arsonist. Why are you still here? What is this? Your mouth is not a question anymore. The dead are in love with it and the corpses of trees yearn for it. Your stupid inkwell heart keeps pumping something liquidy into you liquefying you further. I keep staring, I cannot help but. Your mouth keeps spilling the blackness of the stars. Your funerary breath is delicious. You are diffusing something peculiar, something woodsy. Copses in my head are doused with it, dark and wet. My mind, my poor mind cannot quite contain your entire corpus, the whole of it is too huge. But you are still in the air, amidst the white noise, floating in the air. A certain pine scent. It smells suspiciously like pittosporum. You are filling the air and what’s left of our world with it. But everything is wet about these woods. Bury the gods deep in here. This isn’t what I wanted.

Why is the company of nice smelling women thought to be a good thing? Poor escape that is. They’d ruin your mind and empty you out just the same.

Suddenly, I was looking at her. She was standing so close, her actual actuality even better than her imagery, simpler than all these words. She is nonugly, kind of. She's beautiful in a way that she could only be contained within unknown paintings, unpainted by even more obscure artists, not even being painted. But right now, she was out of those frames. Standing there, between her two worlds, gracefully existing in front of me. Her breath resinous, so stale but in my face. Empty but Smiling, bumping into me every so often, can't quite stay in one place, flickering out of my mind. She was really breathless, out of breath, quivering and breathing like a long time Time Traveler no longer traveling through time. She was timeless yet immediate. And she was telling me something so timely. She was saying. "It's okay. Breathe. You don't need another war. You don't have to fight now. This is one fight you needn't fighting. This fight you could do without fighting at all." That's when I knew I wouldn't be finishing this. I won't. Let's murder these trees together. But she knows. I have a certain affinity for all ghosts not around me. Though only one remains my favorite. And she's right there standing in the corner of this atelier her very own attic grinning but refusing to haunt me.

And maybe, this is still July, maybe. Maybe in this July mermaids with legs are still drowning in my tub a year later, sinking, screeching, mutely screaming their silent screams, through this muted silence, dying slowly dying their watery deaths. Maybe July is mermaids month and may it remain so forever. But February will always be a month for ghosts and for farewells. A month of ghosts and of farewells. But do remember and keep this in mind. A Writer's farewell is never a goodbye.

But then she was fading from this page, this paper so frail, her last night seeping into her and she was saying to me, no one should haunt you but me.

In a short distance, a distance so short that it could easily be seen and believed. And what's there to see other than the mutual past, but worn-out old fishing boats weathered and roughened bobbing in the sea. All the boats bobbed freely frayed only with the music of the olden sea. Faded, weary with use, almost paintless in the brightened gloom, the boats were tottering happily, relaxed for once. Almost chirping away, sated, for now, a little buzzed with what they were doing themselves on the water that's restless by choice, that won't stay still. In short, the boats were merry in the bosom of the old sea. Though something else, something older than the sea, was certainly not merry. Far from it.

But the sea itself, that ole fool that just won't fade, go away, and die? The sea was luminous and greedy in the fresh sunlight, reminding everyone, all of us and et al of better lights of yesterday. No fireflies had died today for this. But the old sea was on the move, heavy and hungry swelling ready to give itself up, breathing in and out mightily, satisfied with itself.

The sea was agitated, it looked fattened, sluggish and smug, about to heave and give back all that it took. The sea was stirring, no longer waiting for the Carmine September. But what is so great about that? What was so grand about the once blue sea? The sea only takes, it doesn't give anything back. That was its only greatness. Fortunately, no one was listening to the ocean, leastways not to this one.

This isn't about the sea. No, this is about the trees nearby, in a soft distance swaying softly. Not oaks or firs but palm trees, palm trees swayed in this volume, native and tasty. Trees slightly drunk and mostly rebellious. Resentful. They didn't want to be kindling for someone else's writing no more, why the heck should they make others fly while they stay rooted in one place? Spillage of ink, yuck! Words, what good are they? No one cares about them anymore. What power do they have in a steampunk world where the machines are sentient. Though the trees readily admitted they think of words sometimes, they missed the blackness of ink. They sure loved Jesse Wallace's novels. And they missed the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs themselves dreamt of trees stripped of everything, and the stripped trees were patiently dreaming of extinction.

Let's talk about that for a while, no? In a corner of the night, let us decipher our own scrawl.
All the trees, erstwhile and new, were shaking in the wind, wavering ready to roll off this paper-like fuzz and dandelion. Just dust them off the pages, will ya, blow them off the surface and you are good to go. Stupid Saoirse, no need to talk, no need to ruin new things now. There's no song to tremble to here.

Trees were clustered in a clearing a little to the left, at the end of the dirt path that leads down to them, at the very edge of this little story. They were gathered there for something, let's not disappoint them. Walk down the stone stairs and stand in between them, they are rustling so sweetly. Forget the sea, and listen to them.

In that clearing, all the trees rippled swinging back and forth. The false light was trapped there within the knowing woods, secrets making them nod. Sudden abrupt movements in the recesses of that very small forest and the local rabbits scattered; an explosion of furry tiny bodies. They were the effect, but what was the cause? Oh, these two. Why couldn't they have stayed in their cabin, the moon gave them plenty of reason to stay there. Was that pliable feeling only for the strangers to enjoy? Two people in the woods, and all the white rabbits scurrying away trying to escape the noises humans made inside their heads. Silly bunnies, that was their mistake. These two, a man and a woman, weren't human. A boy who could float and a girl who wouldn't. But they both could swim in a Gaimaned ocean.

Everything is evanescent, says Annie.
Who is Annie? says I.

Deciding to be in summer again, home's gone. But a heart's still here waiting for the beat of hers, eagerly waiting for her dirtied kisses. Her last fiery kiss had taken him back to the violent days of Völuspá, those violent shades, Hearkening back to days when she breathed into him, the wonder of her touch could do that. But that very kiss got stolen, as did the hearth between her thighs. A winter bird did that. Her deadbeat heart lay dead somewhere else. Look across the untouched beach and the pure sand dunes, see all the water's gone. She just isn't watery enough anymore. Where are her tears?

There, look at that. The sun's about to cleave into the night. Then the new sun like this new song melted on her face, and now I want to too whilst the palm trees swaying in the wind over yonder. Only the quiet of the sun made all of her faces shine like that. All the trees grinning in that small clearing near the water, what's left of it anyway, agreed.

But we were talking about the two people walking in the woods. Back to that narrowed sunshine. No more night here.

Walking across the forested floor, in the middle of their trek, he started to have second thoughts, lots of them and most of them about her. He looked up, he got spooked. Why did he lookup? He was frightened, all the trees were scaring him. He couldn't stop listening to what they were saying, what they kept telling him. Even in the daylight what they meant to say, got to him. Little did he know, the trees were scared as well, even though they were the instrument of terror themselves. Despite the fact, the elements meant them no harm. The truth was the trees were scaring themselves. Why? The trust between all in this fable was fraught with the unknown. Oh, well what can you do?

She felt something and glanced at him. One look at him, she could see how badly shaken he was. So she did what was natural, she started to take him out of the woods, even though it was disingenuous as hell for her to do so. It was not her story after all and it wasn't up to her to decide what she owned him. But she did decide to become his exit. Trees watching them, she took his hand, moss glistened angrily at that, probably objecting but she proceeded to find a way out for him anyway. His hand in his hers, the slight touch of her palm against his, and the palm trees bestirred themselves emboldening, getting reckless, reviving the old rivalry between the gods and men, and between them too of course. They were in there as well. Why not, the trees were always there. They gleefully stirred the timeless pot of atavistic animosity between all those who played this drear game. They did that because of her and her alone. She alone is responsible for the rift. She was the root cause behind every problem the humankind ever faced. A caustic cause everyone wanted to make their own. A sigil all wanted to pick up and that’s including myself. But here’s the thing, They all wanted to get behind her yet she's one cost no one wants to pay. Except those trees. There is a good reason why she is the real reason everything is such a mess. That's because the ocean, that one yeah, obeyed only her. Having surrendered to her when the world was first created, and then made undone. But this isn't about the sea, it's about the trees. Ask them, they'll tell you. What were the trees doing at this point, you ask? Well, more daring, they started to make him even more uncomfortable the way they were staring at him; he wanted to hide behind her, which was odd he was so used to hiding inside her. Inside out she was his sincere succor.

Hurriedly, she was looking for an opening but not finding it. How could she, she was an egress herself, the very out she was looking for. But no one told her, for who appreciate mothers though she wasn't one. The trees knew that he did too but he wouldn't tell her or distract her attention, dissuade her from rescuing him in any way. Malicious and bitter rivals that they were again once again, trees were warning her, well they were trying. She simply didn't speak their tongue anymore. Whatever they were saying clung to her head like fog, the pink streaks in her hair started to look glazed over. He sighed, this glove wasn't attractive anymore. What was he thinking coming down here following her smile, reddened even without her cape? They needed to cut an opening now. Now, right now!

A certain slant of light tried to angle into the cluster of overgrown green canopy. Her grip still firm, her gait assertive, she led him on. But what a ghost she still was for him. Home wasn't here, she was. Looking at her, why did he want to be home, when she was with him? While she was still holding him, he opened his hand, flexing his fingers and then closing his fist, he enmeshed their fingers again. He felt her, he felt it. What she was. Her touch was cometary.

His loneliness must be chafing her, she reassured him. She patted the back of his hand, her thumb stroking his skin. It was weird, she was squeezing his hand, and the cherry trees everywhere were erupting into flames. Every tree was susceptible to the things she did with her hands, it was a little crazy just how beautiful that was, and she was a little seek crazed up after all. The trees did have a lot to be jealous of, - no wait, envious of- thanks Homer!

Maybe she was trying to become his Thought. Pace slow, head down, the arch of her simple smile dappled with the borrowed sunlight. The swaying of her hips, the motion of it all brought to mind the lagoons they left behind. Behind them, in front of them. Her and him. Him and her. And the trees. The trees were making too much noise, they seem to be raveling in his distress. The tallest of them reminded him of the sea. The roar of the sea wasn't making him sick, just to be clear. He was just sick of the sea. All the blueness making him gag. Even far away and further distanced by her, he could still smell the sea, he smelt the sea. And amidst the trees, the sea knew him only too well. It was all sickening. Driving him insane, slowly and by increments. Little by little, a slow burn. Soon enough, they'd get back to the sea. With the sea so far away how could he still smell it? He finds himself looking at her.

Her grip tightened, he forgot, and they walked on. She leading him to the safety of her designs that was by her design, tugging him along rather nicely and so completely. Deigning to take him there her way as they trudged and trundled, on and on through the encompassing trees.

The trees were snickering, saying something to each other, something, making him wish even more he wasn't here. The trees whispered and her tresses echoed their resinous words, her pink streaks mocking him even.

Admit it, they all seem to be saying to him, you care for her.
While you are at it, the trees also intoned, admit that she is as lovely as your thoughts.

Then they admonished him, hey hi hello, you just stood at the water's edge. Just near enough where the waves touched your toes, almost close enough. Lingering at the threshold, straying on the fringes when the real damn thing, and damned thing indeed, damn her, was within your stupid little mortal grasp.
Rasped the dying trees, within reach you little fool of a man and you had the wherewithal too for that, lucky you. but what can we humble trees say of your head. In your head, you were king too. And rightly so. You stood too long wiggling your toes at the surf. The warm foam lapping up your feet, licking the soles with salt as the salt of memory licked you. No spume brightened the faces; yours or hers. Though you couldn't take what she was spewing at the edge of your old world. You just couldn't resist falling in, could you? Not falling off or falling apart, you didn't dare listen to the ocean that was her sea.

That very song of hers could have been yours. The trees went on, all of it, only yours. But lonely you- alas, you are no white knight nor a White Rabbit for that matter. It is okay to be afraid sometimes, but you sir, are a coward.

The trees were done, but since he wasn't quite undone yet, they went on to do him a huge disservice, furthermore. They replaced each star there ever were with his thoughts. No consent of his required for that kiss of fiction. Those trees, air, and bones that they were. You get tired of them rather quickly, only dottle of them remained, about to be smoked like happiness. Yet those moribund trees dared to actually do that; touch his thoughts. They weren't going to last but their desire to knead something alive was stronger than their boles. However, those trees did show him the stars, so they had his gratitude and many thanks.

And then abruptly, she took him out, pulling him out of there. Just like that, they were out of the woods. But they left something of his, not hers mind you, but his behind in their wake. And the trees took something from him that wasn't him; they got swindled too. So there is that to be cheerful about.

Ergo, little of him was held behind them and something else came with them instead. Something followed them outside as they made their escape from the trees. Something feral, something inky.

Somewhere between the mouth of that deep forest and where he needed to be was his home. Then there was her to be considered. She was with him, but then again, she wasn't.

Where did she go? Look there! Of course, she now stood in the middle of that road, at that junction. She became his other choice.

Two lanes. One leads to her, one leads to home. One leads to nowhere, and that was where he wanted to be.

But in the middle of the middle of his nowhere, there he stood.

- which road to take
- what to choose
-which to trudge
-which is home
-witch is her
-too many forks
-too many bends
in the road
-not enough of them Irish
- which of them to be walked on
- what to trek
-which forested floor to be trodden.
- which path should he forge?
her skin never ends.

Come on now, which foliage to part first. Go on, and there is a river. Do you ford it? And from where to forage from, from whence even, oh, you are so fancy.

After that, crave the stairs out of the Callanish stones, go on make them. But. When to mount them and which of the Ariel poems to recite aloud while on top? In that still moment, read Plath's poetry out loud while this Snow Moon looks on, watching over him.

And

Then. If you must know. And he did. Which of the lips to graze first? Which ones, he really must know. Quick, seriously tell him, he really must know right away. What a culinarily dilemma he faced but he had his preferences, too. Just so you know, and boy do you know.

In form of an answer, the dead leaves rustled tearing out of the branches, dying even more so. They fell from the trees but didn't land on her open palms. Contrary to how he felt that's where all things ended up; in her hands. Though it was her face that he wanted to end on, he couldn't help himself. How could he not? Before her, he didn't know how to end anything. He couldn't find an ending. After all that was once her, he became intimate with his endings, all of them. Looking at her, he can wring out any ending now.

Here we go again, the trees were whispering once more. But this time he was mindful enough to listen.

Can you survive her dreams? They asked him and asked nothing of him. He looked down at his hand still in hers, laced together. Suddenly, he was sure. He nodded curtly, his gesture oddly reminiscent of old forest kings.

I have been thinking about this for a long time now. He told the trees. I have been saying this for a while now. I just realized it and I'm certain of it. These are just bad dreams. In the badlands, those dreaming of us are bound to wake up sooner or later.

He found that the trees were still listening, so he added. I don't know much but I know this. One Day Life will be Her and I'll be Home again. Two separate things, I know but they don't have to be. Anyway, that's my takeaway from all this. From this little walk through these here woods.

Then he told the trees to stop walking with him and get back to their forest. He was no longer their visitor. What an ending but not exactly the end this was.

Look, he said to her. There's a beautiful girl.
She looked at him for the first time within this timeline. Where, she said.

Here.

Doesn't matter. It's all a disappearing act, she told him in earnest.

And he knew as sure as the moon would come out later tonight that a voice can be home too. There was a whole civilization lost in her voice. Lost on that highway. Right now, her voice held a different history of rain within it.

He looked at her again, closed his eyes and let the memories of her flood in the chosen darkness. He looked at her in memory. Then opening his eyes, in actuality. A girl made beautiful in the shallows. He thought if he said that long enough, he'd convince himself as well as her. A beautiful girl, he repeated. Insisted. A beautiful girl, and not just a mere thought or a simple painted memory. And sometimes, that's all you need; shuffle the ivory deck a bit and pick a memory at random. That's all you'll need this winter to snuggle with, a memory and some music to keep you warm and safe. Sometimes a memory is all you have to get by and sometimes that is enough. Sometimes there is enough magic and sometimes magic is enough. Overkill? I agree, Yusra.

He didn't pick where to go really, but she was by his side again and if he let it, she could become the very thing he lost...... to her.

He glanced at her. Speaking of the moon. You know, the moon has turned you into all sorts of beautiful things so many different times. You could do to help the poor thing out once in a while. Even once in a blue moon! That's only fair and proper. Moon has always cherished you for some reason. Moonbows have always been your friend, You have always been such a bitch to her just because you could.

To his surprise, she agreed with him. She accepted his request and the request of the moon.

She looked at him. He looked at her.
They were no longer some paintings waiting to be perfected. They let it go, gelled, and in abandon were once again in a single frame. Nothing framing them there but they wanted to be there on their own and they own that.

The moon was almost out by then, intending to be full tonight, of all nights, full of thoughts of Other Them. But the moon vowed to fill his January with her and promised to pour all of him into her, a solemn promise no matter how unbearable that makes it for her. Moon promptly filled her winter with proper sleep, thus perfecting her wintersleep. The moon still cared about her, him she didn't like anymore. He doesn't listen to her keening anymore. But the moon wasn't worried, all she felt was a relief. Her work done, pleased with herself, the bloated moon hummed happily as the rest of the reality went to righteous sleep.

Oh, you thought this was over? This isn't the end. It's not even a sense of an ending. You know better by now; how whimsical I am about my endings, all of them. Do you hear those drums?

No, it ends with them and it hasn't because nothing ended between them, has it?

No, for years now the Taxman has been warning about the end of days and this is not how everything would go. Maybe things wouldn't go like Robert Barathoen went, but everything will go, all of it.

I have been there, I have been that. I don't want to be that guy again. At least not for a while anyway. but I miss being that guy when the only enemy I had was myself. When there was nothing to hate. I was as optimistic as that rainbowed clown over at HitRECord. Lordy, I love that guy. But there isn't much hope when there is too much to hope for.

A knife to the head works for the living zombies, it should be enough for the overly imaginative too, who are too optimistic about their imaginations. A single thrust of a sharp blade to the temple and you'll have another thing in your skull to twist around and make the sufferings that aren't yours, yours.

I know, you have no coin for this poem but back to those two. Even if they are not seeking any celestial bodies falling from the sky right now nor any shooting star coming their way.

Really, no need for them to be on a lookout for any rocks, Giacobini or the one that had wiped out the ones that were here before us.

As planetary as these two are, they just didn't care which plane they were on. Look at these two, ambling around in the wintry wasteland without a care, walking for their past when it was their future that was looking for them and it was already disappointed with them.. But of course, they weren't really at the South Pole, nowhere near it. Nor south of anywhere, where they should be. The fact is, this is a dream the forest is having.

Now let us return to these misfits, Iwan Rheon less no less, as all the swallows return to Capistrano.

We could have found a place to put your heart if you had found this song sooner. Alight, I am done. I am alright, I am doing OK.

That wasn't how it ended.

So this is how it had happened, this is how it all went down.

She took him off the gamy game trail and taken him to the very edge of the woods. There weren't any decorative hedges around. She didn't even find any overgrowth archways trimmed in Tolkien motifs.

They weren't getting out, she couldn't cut any opening, there was no way out. She wasn't frustrated, she wasn't the one stuck in a memory. She simply didn't care.

Holding his hand, she felt his tension and to her surprise, she found out she still cared about him. Crap, that was unfortunate. She tried again but the trees wouldn't let her, again they blocked her.

She stifled a shriek, she wouldn't panic, she will not despair she was breathing for two. To take his mind off the trees, she had taken him off the trail, pretending their end was in sight. She squeezed his hand tenderly, comforting him.

She would shelter him, protect him as much as she could from her friends. Those friends leered at that, trees didn't tell her she was only imprecating him by delaying the inevitable.

Hard cut to him, just for a second. He felt her struggle to remain hopeful, holding him up, trying to remain his champion. She was with him and still for him. And for him, she was whistling Sigur Ros tunes as she whittled the foliage and pilfer a path just or him. But like the sadness of the sun her music was not enough. Athwart, she was right there side by side and by his side, their shoulders bumping against each other's as they walked, but he distinctively felt her drifting farther and farther away from him. Not to that blighted strange sea this time, no. But away from herself. She was here and she very much wasn't. That was evident. Even if it wasn't. It felt like her mind was on something else, and her heart. His words used to have heart but now it looked like she realized that the words are more than just words. She needed to forget that intimately.
They were walking together but it seemed like she was running away from him. She was barefoot. She was the girl running. She was Passenger's song. He couldn't possibly have that. He wanted to but she wouldn't let go of his hand. What could he do? Her presence limned her absence. Her absence taught him more than her presence ever could.

The past they shared was rotten at this point and by now even he started to feel something was amiss. He was smelling overripe things, dead autumn flowers chief among them. The sense of dread thickened with every step. He couldn't shake the feeling that the dead were walking beside him. He risked a glance. He was no mathematician but in the graveyard utterly devoid of secrets, she was the only one alive. And next to him. That he could see. As Henri Poincaré would say only to him; it is all a fakery but he would point out and say, don't fret and finish. And as unlikely as it seemed he just might have a bullet for her. Though clearly she wasn't his valentine or anyone's.

Alright, children back to the reality that's her. Unfortunately.

All the abandon of the swallows
Raincheck ..... maybe.

.....and we should have stayed there in the maze. Who was going to catch us? The ancient thing chasing us had already caught us. It had killed us, remember? Tore us apart whilst tearing us limb from limb, don't you remember? It's hardly something you forget. But you had forgotten so much more than just to stay alive for us. We fought, but in the end, we were snared, so we lost. It was fair.

Under the complicit moon, whimsical and wistful, in its lust to join in the slaughter, to be a part of the supple mayhem, that thing had murdered us. Like it's supposed to in the legends of yesterday's yore. Can you blame it, really. No Sigur Rós songs to accompany that act, bloody conspirators they turned out to be. Their bowed guitar betrayed us, laying out the trap that was set for us alone, in the spillage of that lonely April day that was actually night.

It did kill us, the animal was wild and territorial. It killed us but we were feral too. Together we defeated it. We were together that was its defeat. In our togetherness, you and I, we haunt him now in his dreams. We hunt him there. We should have made that garden our home. Where we could slip each other one another one's nightmares. The lovely nightmares we used to share. No one could shame us for that, at least, not now. But who is the ghost now? Oh the greenness of the dead garden is so beautiful.

But we didn't stay there, did we? That is the sadness of our ending. But our happiness mustn't make us so unhappy now. Look, at the end of that tunnel, both the White Rabbit and Alice are standing there. Why are they staring at us like that?

Sure, ere we were alive. But still, how can we ever get back there, when we were never here to begin with? Do cheer up, all those warrens are still waiting for us. Well, for me at least. You can stay.

No matter what or where our murderer is absent there.

It wasn't ruinous. It was never that. This thing that was between us. This thing between us. When we faced each other every September. It was there. This film of a reason reducing the small space between us, inch by inch. It was always there. As pleasant as a knife. As heavy as a boulder. As temporary as a goodbye. As sharp as bonds squeezing out the last of blood between this relationship, wringing it out.

What was once between us, this thing that was once there between two of us, none of us, this thing of ours wasn't always so heavy. I'll admit it. It has always been foisted upon me, sure, but I'll admit even further, I let it fester. I stood by the door, opening it further, letting her in.

But this thing of ours, that we both had feasted on before letting it rot, this thing between us wasn't always like this. At the midnight of our mess, this mass is just so heavy.

This misshapen fallible bond of ours, fraught with so much misfortune, we festooned ourselves to it though we were never tied down to anything. It's not this ruinous thing that ruined this June.

Our thing, this ruinous thing between us, this resinous thing, this beautiful thing. That's not what ruined June. No, no. Not the lack of understanding or inconvenience. No, no, it's that very understanding ruined us. We did love one another, that much is true, too much sometimes, but we only loved each other when it was just inconvenient. Then we conveniently forgot that. No, no. It's all this understanding, doing us in. We understand ourselves better underwater. We understand all too well and not at all. It's that understanding that ruined June. What is this dross that's crumbling in my hand, it was once gold, you know. It was. Really. It really was. But now. Now, look what we have done, to each other and to ourselves. We are alone, we are our own buttress.

There is silence, here. There's silence here, too much. Sometimes there is too much silence here. There's silence everywhere. It's all around me. There's silence inside my house. There is silence outside my home. There is just too much silence. Inside my head and outside of my skull as well. There is too much silence in my mind, and I cannot make my mind silent. There is enough silence around me to let it just eat me. I'm going to let this silence eat me, hoping, in hopes that it'll eat my silence as well. In order for this silence to embrace me, I must embrace it as well. I'll let you hug me, devouring the silence. This silence eating me, it will devour the remnants of what I never had. Finishing up the remains of little of what was not left behind. This silence. Let me have it all, I want to keep it. I prefer it, it's all I have left in my heart.

I need my heart to live.

I do not wish for this silence. It's not the silence I want right now. But this silence is not telling me that I am beyond repair, beyond help. It's this silence that’s No One helping me. It's this silence that disgusts me.

Break. Break your own heart. Let it break. Let it hurt. Crack it wide open. Use all your fingers, especially the ones she liked, to pry open this prism as well. Open it up. Heal. Harden your heart, as well as other parts of you. Let it go. Be okay.

In the end, at the end of that ending, you are going to have to let it go.

My heart is breaking, because I'm letting it. My heart is gone.

That crack you are hearing is not that of the heart. That crack is of you going away and my leaving you. Hear that crack. It's the collective heartbreaking.

Why was it breaking you are not even asking. My anger became caustic too quickly, do you even know the cause of it? All we have is all we had and not much else. I'm readily holding onto that while you are hastily corrupting it, corrupting that dream. We are not even sleeping together but sharing that dream. I accept this silence now.

Because this silence is an absence but my own absence is the punishment. But who exactly is it punishing?

You are holding on too tightly. I can't even say my own name, like she would sometimes say her own stupidly, I don't know what it is anymore. My name means differently to different people and not at all to me. And if I have to hold on like this then it's not real. It hurts because that was the only thing that was real.

I am going to need you to do this for yourself. I'm going to do it for myself as well. I'm going to have to do this myself for myself. You are going to have to let it go, everything, let it all go. Let go of everything.

However, I have been refusing reality, resisting it because it's so hard; for I know for a very brief time, for half a lifetime, she wasn't special because she was all I had or I was all I she had. She was special because she was, that. She was just that. Special. But I'm letting that go now. Let it go.

I know that trust. What happened to our trust? Where has it gone off to? What has our trust evaporated into? I knew our molten trust. I know our trust. I know you know that too. That very trust.

I wish you'd see just how unique your mind is, just how rare you are. I want you to know that wherever we are, I have no problem following you anywhere. I'll quickly adjust to your narrative and make room for you. There is truly no one quite like you.

At this rock bottom, which is just not my own, at the end of this line, at the bottom of this, I know this. Ultimately. No one, no one person, not a single solitary person, is worth this much pain, too much. So much pain that it would require a factory resetting to make it all better in that valley. No one is worth altering your heart rate for. Even at that altar, that temple.

But your favorite person. When it's your perfect reflection that's been hurting you, squeezing your heart shut, it hits you different.
You were there through imperfections and you get abandoned so perfectly, it's perfect. Standing right next to this smashed-looking glass, you stand there with imperfections, and on the other side of that smooth surface, the other side is so perfectly oblivious it's perfect.

Something is amiss, really, there was. Until I caught that. We both operate with addled brains, and there is something fundamentally wrong with us, we were right about that. Neither one of us is sane, but when together we were quite normal, and apart, we are insane thinking the other is normal, that's the insanity here.

This? You want me to keep all of this alive? What's the point of this pointlessness? I thought through you I knew you and myself. I know you, I thought you knew that. You are gone now. You went so far away. I'm going even farther away from you, farther and farther away from this broken truth. You are so beautiful. But why keep that alive?

Furthermore, there is no further we can go from here. What are we, you and I, we are what we have always been. What we are now, we are peopleless people living different sorts of lives, we are the ones who are not here now is who we are now.

Outside of us, of our own selves, we are out of time, outside of this, we both saw the wider world out there, together but alone, without each other. Though we live temporary lives outside our own world, the world between us is anything but temporary. Though it was only that just that.

We gave up so much to feel something we weren't feeling but what we have been feeling the feeling we had, we’ll never give that up. We had given up so much of our world to feel newer things, to experience new feelings, both at the same time, we had given up so much to feel more, of us.

What we had between us was more than a feeling, it was a universe that was grateful, a grateful universe, that was gratefully just ours.
See, for the past couple of months, I like thinking about you, you see all the places I saw, and you are seeing, those places are not the ones that are pretty. I just cannot be the one who keeps hurting you. I destroyed my own heart so I wouldn't ruin myself for you. Forget you? I’ll keep on feeling that forever.
I'll keep what we have. If she's going to be a bricklayer of my ascent, then I must let her be. But I'll carry inside what we made of my room always with me. I’ll carry her inside me forever.

Do you hear that? Are you still listening to the song from September? That September is more beautiful than the beautiful one. Just. Can I ask one thing? One last thing before you go; one last time before I go. Why stay for those who left and not for the one who stayed?

One more time before we leave, please, please don't ask me to be real and desposses myself of you. I will do no such thing. I'll never let go and leave.

It's ok. It's ok. All this silence, golden, it's ok. You are Okay. It's going to be ok.

Not necessarily so. Certainly, it's not true. But I have been feeling quite dethroned, a pit of my own making, what of it. Turning slightly sideways, I can't help but look at it. At the whiteness of the white tub. Even though the never not so innocuous things we didn't do in our tub, my tub looks so innocent right now in the haze of absence. Even without any spare mermaids to drown that very tub, very white looks so empty. Sans all those mermaids, my tub looks so lonely, without the music of their screeching, what is there to listen to?

I get it now, what this book The Comet Seekers is about, and my understanding is as loud as your gasp of realization was of something I shouldn't have realized for I have only made a mess of things. Now look at this misshapen mess, how to get down and out of this mesa of peaked things. Look at all this beautiful blood and spilled ink. But I get it now, I understand what Comet Seekers is about.

Even before we had stood facing each other in the mossy dell in the forest amongst my favorite woods. I understood. Even before standing there slowly and gently removing the book jacket together, of the Comet Seekers, I understood. It wasn't about us seeking comets, no of course not, nor it’s about comets seeking us.

There is only a ghost of a reason between us separating us in our world. We are still standing before one another. Standing so close to this Comet, I know I'm only seeking you. I'm seeing you again. I see you. We’ll meet again soon? Looking at this Comet, I know, I'm coming to you. We only want mass extinction of ourselves. We are only interested in mutually reassured destruction.

I am not what you are doing to me. What you have been saying is not enough. If you want me to what? Leave you? Move on? Forget you? Then you are going to have to kill me. Because I'll never stop loving you. I'll never give you up. And I keep reading books that are not about us, not exactly, I keep finding them. And again and again, I keep coming across characters in those books who are not really us but shadows of us that won't stop chasing us until at last we find ourselves and each other again.

I have been writing, I have always been writing, what I have written, I have been writing way long before I ever met you, or knew you or even knew of you, you were you but I didn't know you. Do I know you now? I don't know. But I am writing, I know that. More so in your absence than in your presence, I am writing again. But in the past, I have lost words before, I lost words, I have lost entire worlds, I have lost you many times before, I lost words first, then I found them again albeit very slowly, then I lost both my words and you together. Now I have my words again. The only joy I get from life, my pathway to happiness I'd give them up to have you in my life again. My words or you? What to abandon? The choice is mine. So I would rather not. I rather not. I'll tell you this much though. All my words, everything I have written, wrote, or will write have led me to you. Where are you leading me now though?

It didn't happen suddenly, nor all of a sudden. This wreck of my mind. I have tried to overcome this addiction to that candy. I did. My best. Because you were my best. I know I'm not right. But I'm not wrong here either. Sometimes, I just wish. You liked me the way
I like you now.

All those decades burned away from us, and I couldn't escape the feeling that you have always loved me more than I loved you. But now I know you know I love you more than I have loved anything else. Why? You are still asking. You have made everything else real for me, and all my fantasies ensuing or otherwise ceased to be just my own. The world outside my head was just as beautiful as the inside was. I wouldn't have known this otherwise.
Even now, when I couldn't possibly love you more, even when I love you more than you love me, even so I feel you still love me more than I love you. It's in the action of your words, your perennial kindness, and the sway of your hips.

It's me, I'm the problem I know. I wish I knew how to love another person as well. I wish I knew how to love someone else now.

Listen. I love you. Listen. Do you hear that? I love you. Do you hear that crack? I love you. I know you love me too. I know you do. I love you. I'm telling you all that now in lieu of a farewell. I don't know how to say goodbye to you. It's you. How do I say goodbye to you? Everyone left me and I forgot them. I can't forget you because you never did. Leave me.

I love you so much.

But now we have lost each other over the absolute nothingness of nothing. I'm going to miss you, but you are going to miss me more. I’m still here. But you are gone. Now I'm gone, too. All I'm left with is That Feeling and I'm poorer for it

Yet in the brokenness of someone's heart, I know I'll see you again.

I just need to stop seeing you in my dreams first.

And
And

I'll look for you in fiction from now on. I keep finding you there anyway. And, and I'm there too.

Maybe in fiction, we'll do this right. That's the fantasy.

I want to write about the time we were there in the trenches. Do you remember that? Fighting what wasn't coming at us, warding off something that wasn't there. Toiling hard, going farther and farther away from what made us, well, us, exerting even further, then utter exhaustion. But later, there weren't any exhumations; there were no bones left to sift through. So there was no need for ossuaries of any kind.

But for a little while that we were alive and down there, there was only us, mists of blood around our heads, red ribbons twirling in the air, tying us together, binding us, keeping us there, making us remain there, even after we had left. Did I leave you there in the sodden muck in the midst of all the discarded shells, or am I still there? I didn't come to your side; you were always like a bullet on the ground, then you were one. That's where you are now, still hoping for some respite. Yeah, I'm not writing that. It would feel too much like a confession.

Where we are now, even the ghosts refuse to stay in the corner. They are stirring, aswirl.
They were here, but we are not.

Then we are standing in the shanties the army had made into their offices, staring at all the letters soldiers of a forgotten war wrote to their loved ones.

All the letters written on the Wall.

All of my endings. Everything you took from me couldn't make you last long on that starry night. And here, I thought only writers were ghosts. All the hearts that you had ripped from me, keep them. We are no longer the Ants.