I had a
dream once, back
before I realized I couldn't cure you. Back when I thought I could patch back together the fragments that were your soul, and that I could do it without your help. Out there in the height of our
rapture, when we were lost in ourselves and sinking ever closer to the heart of the other, I saw you standing before a
field of stars, your body in silhouette with arms outstretched. I saw your face lit yellow against the purple ink of
night. The stars all seemed to hover. Your brightness alone was the source that kept them aloft.
I saw you, a slight little boy with
only the weight of a whisper. Amidst the signs that
gravity was beginning to pull it down, I dreamed the
sky could crush you, so as I watched, it did. Its
hands began to close around the leaf that was
your body.
You fell.
Under clean white sheets laid down in a deep and solitary room, you fell. Your
fears that were like the night sky falling began to devour you in earnest. You grew slighter still. Day and night fell in endless repetition across a lonely room, miles away from the world where we said
goodbye. The heat of the dawn held your chest in a sweat, the dream of the world collapsing still wet on your lips. You waned like the
moon, day after day until the month reached its end and real night had to fall. You slipped away in sheets of lilting skin, and the bones sank down into the quiet, melting off like
powder. You slipped away until you had no
mass at all, and all that remained was one little tear, rolling down on the
shadow of what had been your face. Clean white sheets collapsed without your
frame to hold them, and I was free to cry at last.
I wonder sometimes why I stayed as long as I did when
death had already laid its hands on our
love. It wasn't the stars. It wasn't your
sickness, that sickness of soul that sapped the life from my bones.
It wasn't the way you hated you, and sometimes how that made me hate me. Maybe it was the image of your face laid yellow on night, and the fear of you seeping out into the sky, dissipating into the
hearts of stars.
Little boy who waned with the moon, I never knew how strong you were. Or that
your hate would never forgive me.