Haha, I knew it. I just knew it. February is for ghosts. For the ghosts of all the things that were never there. Full of ghosts, it's a month for goodbyes. A goodbye is not the end, even it is the end of what you want to be. Even if it is the end, it’s not the end of anything, not yet anyway and it doesn’t end anything. I don’t want you, I never needed you. I am not digressing. We are still on the same page, still here in this, I am disgusted, but we are still dissecting you. You are the only ghost I am talking about right now. An alpine ghost who just won’t stay in the mountains. So what happens next? I can't tell you that. I don't know. I can only tell you what happened between the two of us, what had happened to us. What happens next to the rest of us, is well entirely up to you.

So, this is what didn't happen to us.

It was in the civil twilight, I picked up your handwritten note. The one you left in your wake when you left in such a hurry. You fleeing the scene hardly your best trick ever. Though I must tell you, it was in the gloaming I read the damn thing, just before the last of our nights fell. I couldn’t resist, I peeled away all the layers. And lo and behold, it was exactly what I thought it would be, exactly as I thought it ought to be. I won’t fight you over this now. I read the note as it was meant to be read, by me and all by myself, I read it for it was meant for me, yet it wasn't for me.

I was in the mossy dell at dusk at the edge of our dark night. You made a little noise in the end at the end of that night, that had gotten me a little excited. You used to lick the lichen on tree-limbs and roots, remember. You were very exciting back then. You did it so well too. But what I held in my hand among the trees, rest of me aflutter had made me even more agog than your sexy little mewl had. I finished going over your written retreat, you were always exceptional at being submissive, drinking in the belated promise of your words, I savored the lasts of your dregs. Your words. Your words burned in the night like memory, glinting like dull knife, dissipating the remaining sillage of your presence, chasing away the last of your scent. Your words burned my memory and little of the night that was still there. And your brittle note? I don't remember what I did it with it.

You can’t run away from what is inside you though. Aglow, your words glowed in the dark, just like all those latticed patterns and unleavened doodles on your fallow body do, they are beautiful, love love love love them.

All those cursive strokes on your paper and on your body luminous, so luminous. You are a crook and a very bad person. You run run run run, that’s your habit. Don’t go to hell, just stay there. But what I had held in my hand, what kind of lettering was it, what kind of curve was it making. What fashion of a smile was it, it was a shy smile, it was sly too, okay it was mostly sly. Well, it was a farewell of course. What else could it have been other than that. Of course, it was not written in blood or even bits and pieces of your uterus. But scribed with empty air, many falsehoods, and then cooked in a very dead octopus ink, delicious yummy yummy cephalopod glob.

Your letter from the ground, it was still a farewell, no matter how eloquent, or cowardly. I am not afraid of you. Listen, a farewell can’t make you ugly or any uglier, being hesitant about me does and you are quite ugly that way. You were dithering and it was making you uglier and uglier still.

Playing unnecessary hide and seek ain’t sexy, you were so unattractive, to begin with. No one could have saved me from you but you, but fuck you, go away, who the fuck do you think you are, what the fuck do you think we want to be, what we are not, what we can never be.

Though what exactly did your stupid note say, the one all the stripped trees were trying to read over my shoulder?

Keep in mind, a writer’s goodbye is never a farewell. You are not a writer, but this is what you wrote in your departure. I wish I didn’t have the object permanence. Not that. This, you wrote this; men are not good sometimes and women never are, women feel good but they rarely make you feel good, nothing outside of our nature influenced us, hearts of men were already corrupt and their soul if it ever existed, was already rotten.

That’s it, that’s what you wrote in your little note. Why did I need to know this, that’s hardly a spoiler. I would laugh but nothing you ever believed in was funny. You are barely a writer but you are so full of fiction.

Tell me though, do you want to be as real as your fiction ? I know it's great but is it good ? All you have, all that you are holding in your arms, cradling that sorrow oh little sparrow, the only story you have is the one you hold drear in your heart, the one you are hugging even in your absence, that’s the one.

It’s not much of a story since you didn’t drown, blown by the blind mermaids, not by you, you wouldn’t blow me remember, you can see the difference, can you.

It is not a good story, but it is a February story still, though you are not a fabulist. But it’s a firm goodbye, full of ghosts, a flame, a ghost, a girl, you are both and more. I know I miscalculated, by choice and design. But not for long, it can’t last long, it won’t be long now. It never does last. How can it. Your smile is misshapen and shapeless, however you are honest and vulnerable behind it, your smile is shy, it is sly too but okay it is mostly sly. Yes, I have already said that before. Why are you still smiling though, you are gone, love love love your abruptness, you are incomplete but I am whole because you are not, and you are not here.

How could have I made you happy in the end when it was the end. Your happiness was the end, the end was your happiness. Your happiness was empty, your emptiness made you happy. What a funny old life, little of it that’s left, that is. When did I sign my own surrender?

But know that you are not my fucking enemy. You are not my world either. Eater of worlds, you refuse to eat my world. You ate something else, you did eat something else besides the moon, something spindly and liquid. Let the right one in, let me in, let me right in, you said twice. You have done this twice, twice, and I am done with it, done with you, so don’t bother dying, these are the dying days of our war.

I didn’t invite you in but I let you in and welcomed your decay. I am in too much pain, this sickness of being alive, hysteria of living, what a circus it is when we are the clowns, but not the jokers. That is why I prefer the dead, I do. Words on dead trees, now this is a casual goodbye, yours. I was always a better writer than you, but that’s hardly breaking news, you might as well say all the gods are real. I am in so much pain, you are not doing anything to make it any better, you are only making it worse, you are suppurating things, everything. Even when you are not here when you are gone, you are pretty good at that. You can’t ease this pain, the pain is here because you are still here. You seriously didn’t think I was going to address your problems, did you? We never talk about the issues you are facing and go through. You didn’t give me your favour for the final battle in my mind and that’s with an u mind you, but you scuttling off was a favor indeed. You lie. Liar. A part of you didn’t lie, but your part in all this was a lie. No, I won’t be looking for you in your hovel, I won’t be opening up anything anymore. I shall remain in my warren, I want different things now, I’ll be in another night, in another story, I'll be home. But I’ll always have a spare beaver hat for you and some decorative steampunk goggles.

We were never meant to be, it didn’t help that we quickly imbibed the time we had together. What was there between us, what was available, how little of it there was. We went ahead, whittled and winnowed it out even more. What little time we had, we squandered it and now we are the very squalor we live in. It’s saddening and maddening as well. All that glittering blue water and all those whitewashed buildings shimmering in the sunlight. The sun was never enough, but then again, when you love a wet darkness, it's easier to say goodbye to the Sun. It was downright inimical we never spoke like all the other Time Travelers. We should have; our love was hollow waiting for the damn thing to turn hallow. It Never Did. It remained harrowing, it was harrowing. All we had was a squalid desire for one another, even that turned sour.

I mean, we don’t even have any excuse to offer, we weren’t distanced by time like the rest of them. I know this, if only this story was fictional, we could have drunk that, would have drunk that. We were never drunk enough for just the two of us to be enough.

We had too much human baggage for it to be any good or good enough. It was never enough. We weren’t enough nor was there enough of us to go around the carousel we never built in the wavering fields of rye, ha; even in our fever dreams we were feverish, our fever broke but not our dream.

But enough, that’s enough talk of it, enough talk of the end of days. What I am sipping right now is certainly more bitter and grody it’s got bit of a kick, ha, what a brittle world we dwell in, yet it is not fragile enough for me to blacken it. We keep falling down, that’s fine by me, it’s getting the right back up that is bothersome, it bothers me a lot.

We are all breaking apart, torn up by our beliefs, pious misdeeds and ugly intentions. But what amazes me is that we are naïve enough to put ourselves back together every single time, again and again, seriously what the fuck; we all deserve a blade in our spines, twist that blade and then break the damn thing off. Shiv ourselves into sensibility. We never learn, it is shocking and scary. We are the instrument of our own demise and we are willfully playing our dirtied part, our very presence is devastating our world and it is destroying our minds.

And we keep waking up in it, don’t we, our little world of whorl. Whatever happened to our words? Oh wait, that’s right, we used them all. But even face to face with our rapidly diminishing gap between us keeping us warm, we couldn’t share a single space, that’s too bad. Our minds clashing, our intertwining breaths separating us, with no way out we betrayed what was real.

Writing is like math, as you know, the more you practice, the more you can’t stop. The more you do it, the more you don’t understand. The more you write, the more you end up not writing it.

You were a decent songster once, sure, but you are not much of a mathematician, you are messing it up, you keep doing that, keep making the mess of it and not the type you wanted, hehe, with blood, carnage aplenty and gore galore, oh how I had loved your venom.

However, you couldn’t be coherent even for a moment, you didn’t calculate correctly. We are not in our atelier any longer but I’ll paint this anyway; I am not giving you a baby, or six, stillborn or the squealing ones. I wouldn’t let you foist that unmasked bliss upon me.

The weight of your lies are too much to bear, no matter how bare you were. I shall remain blameless of that onerous defeat, thank you ever so much. And what’s the point anyway, I can’t harvest your smile here and in the now, the remaining forests are too thick. Also, you barely resemble anything living anymore anyhow. You are no longer living, but at what cost and what was your cause. What caused you to be this caustic, what happened, to you. Look, how much this want for magic has already cost you. I told you what you wanted would make monsters of us all. It did. But you didn’t listen. So listen to me now, unburdening yourself unto yourself is not treasonous. It’s not a betrayal of anyone at all. You may spill on me and what you’ll stain will stay with me. I’ll be silent for your loss and keep it a secret as well. Just as I stained you, the smell of grass remained with us, long after we had walked off these pages. After all, and not in some afterlife after this life, we both had wanted to know if the trees were whispering the same things.

Here’s the thing, to exchange dry ideas, mix our clay ideologies, to blend and liquefy ourselves, to make more monstrous lies, to get inside and bring it forth from within ourselves, to prepare our progeny is one thirst we couldn’t possibly slake. We wouldn’t be able to, to be honest, and we are not. Let’s be honest, we couldn’t even swap spit, let alone share anything else. It wasn’t simple as that, it is still not as simplistic as that. We couldn’t remaster all the swallows, the birds and not what you did usually as you were wont to do that. We just wouldn’t redux our happiness. What a mess. And not just on your face. What a pheromone cult, your chin was a soft spot for it and you are mainly a sport about it, letting your face become a battlefield where the pitched battles raged on and on, your face was the perfect place to throw axes at. I have many more ideas, not all of them ended up on your face, you know.

I won’t deny that you were very good for my ink but not for my head, I didn’t mind at all. You were fickle though and now your breath is stale. Look at your broken visage, how utterly broken it is, your face’s glazed over, glistening so prettily, I helped pitching in what I could and from where I could, the whey sheen of pink nebulous gob is shifting and undulating as you move even in your stillness. It is throbbing like a darkened heartbeat. Your features are rearranging themselves, the weight of it cracking the mask that’s no longer beneath your face, your face wasn’t your mask, your name was. I can’t look at your face any more, total uncanny valley it is now. No one can recognize you, even you don’t know you. Look at you, just look at you, all the worlds we have lost are beading the entirety of your lush and luscious plane, all of it, beads of tiny dreamless worlds on your softness, though you are not soft but rather lemony.

All those far away worlds that are keep going far, far away and getting farther and farther away from us. Then look what you did, we didn’t finish our dream, the colors weren’t freshly mixed, but you swallowed them anyway, upending all the palettes, I am blaming you. You chewed the paint chips drily like they were pills, but the pills were neither red or blue, not here in this warren, not in this month.

You are forgetting something else, maybe I am an outlier anywhere but in my home, but you are the anomaly, always. You are an earthen seed, but you are their earthen seed, for lack of a better word and I do not lack words, they are your progenitors, so of course they broke you. I knew they’d break you eventually. You are not some perpetual victim, certainly you are no martyr, you are just wrong in what you are. History is on the wrong side of you and you are on the wrong side of it. You are still losing what you have already lost. Get over it, get used to it, you are wrong, wrong wrong wrong.

It is alarming how flawed your dust is. It is astonishing how you don’t see that loving the dead flowers fanatically is making only you a fanatic and never really understanding all that you hate is just you hating your own self even more, you hate filled, bloodletting, hateful creature, you.

Your crimes do not make you fiendish, your claims of attainability do, they are false, but you got that. You are evvol, evil evil evil.

Though, to be fair. You are not terribly horrid, you are not a horrible person. You are not a bitch, not really. You are neither a lunatic, nor ahead of the curve. Certainly, you are not a monster. That would come later when you couldn’t love this monster. Just. You are a Woman. But I don’t want to call you that.

You are more and less than that, there is some joy there, hidden in the loving memory and in the truth of my words, the truth that are words. In fact, I refuse to call you that, I won’t be calling you that. Maybe, I’ll change my mind. I’ll adjust and accept you, maybe it is as simple as that in the end, maybe an end is simple. Just like I had adjusted and then accepted your dead weight.

You are a woman, all that goes with it, well, I am not calling you that. Though I really appreciate the walls of your mind and the color of your blood. But who can really teach you how to be a woman, you always wanted to be, revert back to it and I’ll revere you again. I love the way you love the heat of all the things you have forgotten, yep I just Chris Cornelled it. But you don’t want that.

However, we were talking about your evilness, or lack thereof. Doesn’t matter. No matter what you and your ilk brand yourself as, you’ll remain a rebel against your own sovereign mind. As absent as your piety is, you cannot beatify your sorry ass, you are not a hero. It is just incredible you don’t see how wrong you really are, so disingenuous by design. How rotten your core is, how corrupt your narrative is. And the fable you are clutching to like the straw man that you are, straw man arguments all you have, but that fable is full of faulty evidence, it’s purely hearsay, for you have taken being an informal fallacy to whole other level, what you push forward now has a completely different meaning. Your story's got a story; let’s put it that way, end of discussion.

Still alive and kicking, what a dumpster fire you are. You are buckling, soon you’ll be crushed under the mass of all your denials and all that you deny. As far removed, I am from what you are and even as a former member of your kind, your gullibility doesn’t cease to make me wonder; what a crock of shite, can you even spot that train, it’s wondrous. It never fails to shock me, you are so handicap I can’t even mock you.

Maybe it is not poetic enough to say this into you, but you are pathetic, wait that was poetic, you were full of poems. I just can’t get over your refusal to look at what is right in front of you, your reflection. I am no Sam Harris, but you gotta admit, I have concluded something conclusive here, whilst you continue to obscure, conceal, occlude what you have already hidden from me. The onus is not on me, not this time around, not all the way. So no, no, not only it’s not me, it’s you, it is on you, all of it.

I am no longer me or myself, but as a beast I no longer seek absolution, no more. As a writer, I still want adulation but not from you. You were a staid lover at best, and that was your best, pitiful, a pity but not a plea. I don’t yearn for your forever, I don’t like the curve of your hip now, no matter how warm. You are filling me up with dread and not much else, nothing else really. You are bile; you have made me taste nausea, not the good kind and certainly not for the right reasons.

You make me feel bad about you. I do feel bad about that, not really, but I want to. I only want to carve you into something you are not, but hey wait; no that was you. My desires lay elsewhere in my own kind of forever that involves a cutting board, a dull knife and you in pieces. I am not pleased with you and your senseless butchering of all the Other Alices, your civilized savagery surprising even me when I absolutely cherish your downward spiral, but the savagery behind your smile is quite savage and the color is red, reddening your already reddened mouth .

But since you had already slewed all the rabbits why the slaughter, what is the plural of Alice anyway, I am not happy, with you. You happen to know why. Moors are not our home and the moon is not calling us. You motherfucking pauper monarch; I am not your subject. Off with your bloody head. I like being in the Graveyard of the Elephants, the trees balk; so I am used to rejection letters, some of them I framed, most of them I made you eat them, and though you can’t see my expression right now, but what is the meaning of this? Can you explain it please? No, don’t take off your clothes, just explain, explain yourself! Explain, explain, explain, you are an ex pain, you are such a pain.

See, this started with a simple equation and that’s how it’ll end too, the logic and numbers simply do not add up. Or maybe all this started with a single solitary thought, a single drop of water for this watery dance. All the water squeezed out of nowhere, from somewhere, and dolloped into this waste.

Maybe all this started with a slight ripple across the smooth surface of the lake. But there is a whole ocean impeding us, an entire sea is between us now. Can’t you hear its roar? How else could it have ended in any other way than this, there are no tigers here, who could you cuddle? We are meandering in this wasteland, yet as wasteful as our mere existence is, we are so stubborn, we are infused with the cheer for others, we cling to the hope of getting more.

Maybe that’s why all the planets are so, so afraid of us. There is nothing planetary left anymore, and then there’s you. The mess that’s you remains to be conquered.

My ink hasn’t even dried on your skin and already you are walking away, well walk a little faster, better get going before you ruin yourself too. Absconder, it is in you, not me but this, deserter, it’s your true nature, you were a pretender but you didn't even bother pretending when you were with me. Even though you are running away like a coward, I feel like I am the one who is escaping here. Who’s free now? I am fearless, I am breathing, aren't I? You wanted a battle, here is a War.

Seriously, fuck you, go to hell. But where would you go, gods deserve better than this. Fuck you, there is no hell. Only this, only now. Only this Hell. Even there, even in your hell, I didn't have any doubts. I doubted hell but I never doubted you. You are the kind of hell I could have lived with, you know, oh you do know, you knew, you just didn't tell me. Tell me though, what did the heaven lose when it lost you?

Come take a look at this, see no one really earns this, remember that. I don’t believe in what you are selling, for once eat the fruit from that yew tree over yonder. People are swallowable you said, people need people, you forgot; I don’t do people. I won’t be trusting anything alive from now on, solely thanks to you, for a long while at least. I just want to know one thing. Why do the wet stars haunt you, why are you haunted by them. All those glowing particles cascading down; let them pour themselves onto you. Peppered by something else, something ole, this glitter will do you some good. Allow them to die, let the stars be okay, okay, they are yours, they are you but you are not them.

As for what is below them, the question of you and I, me and you? Well, you are nothing. You are not a paper valentine; you are not even on paper anymore. You might not be my valentine in this ghostly masturbatory month, it’s okay we are all zombies here, but I might have a bullet for you. Lemme just pick it up from the ground. Least I can do.

After the trenches, we find ourselves here and it is much more brutal and raw than our time there in those trenches. Maybe I didn’t get to finish you, or finish you up, or finish anything on you, but let’s finish this, wrap it up. That’s a shame, really, I know how to finish but I couldn’t finish, not with you. What a waste, such a waste.

It is a good day as any for a goodbye. Make no mistake. This is a farewell to a farewell. So, put down your arms. Remember what I told you once; in real life, only the bad guys win. I remember your retort so well; you said, didn’t we win? As to that, sure we won. But do tell me, what are we?

I am afraid we only liked each other’s words and through our words, we didn't like what we saw, words can do that, you know. I was doing fine in my wintery solace until you came along, took away my wintersleep and now I can’t sleep.

You promised me a goodbye unlike me, I am ready for that goodbye, finally you did it, you broke that teacup.

I want to end this.

You are fading, if you are turning into a ghost then you should have let me know at least. But you know what? Forget it; I don’t want to be naked with you. You are not A Ghost Story.

Your face a resting place or not, you are a murderer of your shadow. You get used to your own blindness, it’s easy and comforting. Please don’t give up on yourself, please do not disappoint me, return to me. You want to see one last trick sans actual magic? We are nowhere near books, but our senses are flooded, awashed and aswirled with the smell of musty old pages. You know the funny thing about forgetting everything else while reading, books help you remember where you want to be.

You are vanishing, you are also disappearing, even though bits and pieces of you keep coming back in droves. I am glad you are going, you are unbecoming, I am relieved that you are gone. If you call me, I’ll pick up. You are calling me right now. I am not going to answer your call. I can’t talk to you right now. You make me feel too real. You are making me real when even the fantasy won’t do. But trust it to be fiction, if you don’t get mad at it, I’ll stuff you with even more fiction.

Leave, you are going, you are going, you are going, and you are gone. I am neither in a Neptune Records tee shirt, nor wearing a faded blue shirt in July but I am saying this. The thing is, people no longer want magic and certainly not before the sunrise or even after the sunset. Here’s the thing, all the magic that exists exist just before midnight, and remember how your hair always felt like midnight, your tresses, ah, little thing like that was magic enough.

But enough, I have had enough. Apart from the note, I don’t believe you. You remain dubious. I don’t believe in the trellises of your suffering anymore. I don’t doubt your demise, how can I, do you not see the soot on my hands; you are deader than all the dead trees, but I certainly doubt your departure.

See, I still have my inkblot gods and they do lavish me with words, and I in turn ravage them, don’t you hear the water. You have been good to me, I’ll be happy to admit that. I couldn’t have forgotten that. And nothing you do can negate that, nothing. Certainly, you have granted me access to what was never denied to me. You have made people more skeletal for me, now they have a leg to stand on. You have helped me eat an earthen bowl filled with beetles and helped me digest glowworms. You have made all the stone monkeys dream of me. But hear me out, no listen. I remained faithful to all our monsters whilst, whilst you couldn’t keep it together and now our creatures are turning their faces away from you. They are fully shunning you out; they are going up against you in an open rebellion.

You are being spurned by what you failed to create, look away now and turn around. Though. Thousand suns cannot make me hate you, they have tried and all I can think of in this state of constant altered carbon is, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. Thank you for showing me your body and all the stars on it, thank you for showing me all the stars.

The spiral of cold galaxies unfolding on your skin showed us where we needed to go but separately, they unmasked us and showed us which way to go, what to do. But do we take the first step. All the charts and maps on our bodies led us, here, led us to drink in our destinies and drinking in our destiny tastes exactly like bitter gourd.

This is still February, I know I have said this before but I’ll say it again. I have said this a million times and I have been saying this for a while. This is the absolute stark truth. I'll say this a million times more. So repeat after me. This is not a goodbye, but a thank you.

This is not a goodbye.

Thank you for this goodbye, really, but this is not the end.

Though, I must confess. Even though you need it, your end doesn’t need you.

Alternate ending :

No matter what type of runes I would have written, you wouldn’t have stayed anyway.

What I did wasn’t enough, because I wasn’t enough. But I have had enough of your fullness. You were once reason enough, not anymore, now that's not much of a reason, that's not reason enough anymore to be really reasonable.

Don't ask me why, but I'll tell you anyway. You are too upset and sad about the Dwindling of your Yoke to think how your own words failed to convince you. Think about it, the applause of the strangers, what a strange thing that is, what kind of kindness is that?

Tell me. What does it even matter, if this is not the goodbye I was writing.

You are a Woman but you only deserve my Silence now.

You know, I really love how my perennial hero has said it.

Hannibal said it best, he said it better than I ever could.

I let you know me. See me. I gave you a rare gift, but you didn't want it.