I wish it had been a bridal night instead of a boring nosebleed, standing over my great-grandma's sink at three in the morning. That it had been you taking my breath away and not clots in my nostrils, down the drain as if the rivers sent to confirm I would not give birth that cycle had gotten lost. The shed blood and tears, the countless years spent in breathless wait in order to be there on that belated celebrated day. You in a dress in my favorite hue and mine you had yourself made. To finally see the love I could not hide within my body reflected in your eyes without fear of a glamour or being a disguise. You've been so patient with me all my life, and it's a damn miracle that you still insist on spending the rest of yours at my side. But this is how it's supposed to go, right? You're supposed to marry your best friend, who knows you like they know themselves, who will tolerate you at worst until the bitter end. And I, I must confide, can think of no one else I'd rather spend my life with.]]>
The pendulum swings yet again back and forth as I ask you the millionth time and one more if you still love me, still tolerate my existence, are sure towards me you hold no sliver of anger or hate. Because we've made these vows so many more times, but I'm forbidden by my anxiety from failing to plan for any contingencies. Like I'm my father now, I myself with questions hound: "Well, now you're twenty-two, and I don't want to seem like I'm forcing you to come along with me." Angel numbers meet at midnight's bend. "For you, you'll never see me again." But Jett, does it work the other way? If I ask you to, will you forever stay? Will you swear yourself in health and sickness to my lonely side? Will you in this new world I am creating reside? Because, you should know, if you willed it, I would gladly disappear. Go, if you must, without fear. I will be here at the end of every day to reclaim that which was only ever mine.]]>
One can't raise a caricature of a human being and then draw that same self livid when everything their child sees is out of proportion. Turn again the ragged page, but cover your eyes so you don't see the crude pencil-filled sketchings of my genus, my culled genious, blueprints of my taxidermy, footnotes of a contract forever ago signed: "You promise me that you'll be mine for as long as I can keep you alive." A blood oath that we both signed with the rivers through which flow our lives. But I got too much under my fingernails, double-crossed in reflex, same unleashing hell in a moment I made the mistake of asking if all was well. And when I noticed what I had done, I turned back the hands of time to when you and I were still alive. A memory is just a record, one that I can rewrite in case of failure, in case hard enough I did not try. You only know of this because this deep- sworn vow I am unable to keep, to keep to myself the number of rewinds. I am testing, and you are production, only knowing of the strand of fate accepted, battle-tested, deemed sacred and happy and true. Is it comforting, I wonder, to know there will be no futures where I hurt you?]]>
I kept my promise to you, Jett. I toed the path until the end. Pushed aside the branches that fell on the cracking path and found detours around those whose bark I could not form a painless grasp. Through the flood zones I trode in puddles and in gasping leaps and for those to traverse too deep found a different way home. The path is bordered now with dandelions and violet slips I cannot name. So many friends have come and gone, but here you and I remain. I'm waiting here, Jett. Just like I was a year ago, holding my hands high and with sore throat pleading to the sky: "Here I am! Here my vessel resides! Take me home. I've fought the fight." I've fought the fight. I've won the war. And, Jett, I want to fight no more. I see no point to compete with those who I'd rather broker peace, rather never see ever again, rather watch disappear on the wind. I'll wait here. And I'll wait here until you're ready, until of this departure you have no more fear, until I hear you singing my name like a hymn.]]>
Even though I have multitudes inside me, without you by my side, I feel null and empty. I know that by myself I'm still whole and complete, but yet remains a void inside, you, the missing piece. I wonder, do you also feel on occasion the urge to self-negate? "If I can't have you, I can't have myself, and I don't see any point in anything else." I wonder, where did you and I learn to hate ourselves so? Who beat us down? Who pruned the branches? Who commanded us to kneel? "Do you know why I bothered so long with this dreadful life? Why, even facing down an eternity of servitude with no way to become free, I still struggled on, bothered to take breath? Tell me first, Lethe, what do you expect to be accomplished upon your death? Who do you think will be saved if you manage to die? What salvation given? What hope signified? Do you really think, the moment your breath comes to cease, nobody ever again will from violence bleed? I toed for five years the line between ineffectual death and a pale shadow of life because I prayed, I dared to hope, even if it ebbed more than it flowed, that one day would come a world where I'd fit and I'd have a reason to cut loose and go. It didn't have to mean passing through an Eye. It could grow inside the shell of the old and, when ready, hatch, blossom in the light. Before the Town, before Yewiffe, before precious Sablade, you were already my Anima Mundi, my soul of the world soon on its way. I crawl into your arms and think, 'This is where I belong. This is where I am supposed to be. This is where my heart says I should spend eternity.' Lethe, I love you because you only ever wanted to set me free."]]>