Heaven Cent’s Reviews > A Dowry of Blood > Status Update

You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean. I say you do not have a name.

The intensity of your attention was staggering. At the time, I would have called it proof of your love, burning and all-consuming. But I’ve grown to understand that you have in you more of the scientist obsessed than the lover possessed, and that your examinations lend themselves more towards a scrutiny of weakness, imperfection, any detail in need of your corrective care.

This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. I suppose both are a sort of gentle violence, putting down in ink what scorches the air when spoken aloud.

If you can still hear me wherever you are, my love, my tormentor, hear this:
It was never my intention to murder you.
Not in the beginning anyway.