I will survive you as I had before you, and will continue on after. I will remember who I was before we met, and resurrect her ashes from all the gardens that I burned. I cleared my lungs of all the pollen and replaced the air with something sweeter. I knew who I was before the first time I said your name, and one day still holding the worth of my own– will be the last time, forever. I will no longer feel the sting of who I’ve lost; but drinking deep from Atlantic eyes that have seen my ribs crack open, and embraced me even as I bled on his shirt– You were too scared of the blood, too scared of the viscera that poured from the open wounds you left me.

And then I heal. Stitched up by hands I’ve traced like maps charting freckle to freckle, palm to nape of neck. You will never know anyone like that. You will never be guided home by north star creases on the shores of a coffee stained smile. You will never have their scent tattooed to your skin or their names stained to the marrow of your bones, because you can only love mirrors and stories where you are villains’ victim. You will never know what it’s like to lay skin to skin tracing the outline of a voice sewn into the fabric of every song you’ve ever sung.

Your steeples lay east, drunk on your own perfume, yet you know nothing of decay. Showing your scars like paintings, you are clothed in your disease, and to eat is to lose your audience. And in your desperation to disappear, swiftly the sparrow swoons on the steps of Epidaurus, her glittering blood smeared on unwilling hands. I will not be crucified in fields of lavender, nor for shillings sell myself into your path of penance.

I will redeem myself, but not to walk on the pyrite gravel you named gold, painted pearls on plastic gates. If you are heaven, then let me burn in hell.

I will face a million retributions, but even in sackcloth and ashes I am laid in the lap of lands I am woven in by flesh. You wear the crown of Icarus and in portraits you paint the face of Lucifer, but you will sleep alone. Always alone.

My affections may be a disease but at least I can feel the sickness. What’s left of you? And what can you feel besides the ache of knowing the only voice you’ll ever worship, is your own?

My death will perhaps leave legacies unfounded and scattered, yet in final breaths I will tell Charon the flaws of who I was. I will confess my own mortality, and the sins of imperfection. I will, in bliss, be forgotten.

You will die in the arms of a million strangers, loved by those who never knew you, and yet in the gaze of Anubis you will proclaim yourself divine. I am no more humble, than you, but my reflection shows the scars and stains of who I was and who I am, your eyes twinkle as Nero. What an artist you are, and what an artist we will lose. I do not wait for your fall, nor do I expect humility of the tyrant. I do not expect empathy of the wolves for deer, nor serpents for sparrows– neither do I expect the same of you.

Is it fair to beg the cobra’s fangs for anodyne when she can only give venom? Is it fair to expect the tiger to shut his mouth even as prey lays at his feet?

Is it fair to call you friend? Can you call a storm cloud shelter?