I\'m not sure what hour it is — dawn or dusk — but I\'m sure of one thing. Within me, time feels as though it has stopped. Your absence makes me feel like I\'ve already fallen before my sword, which I feel like I have breath left to plunge through, while the empire still breathes. To recall, this is what death is — not in flesh, but in memory.
I know I do not seek your forgiveness, and neither do I ask for an apology, foolish of me in the first place. Bracing myself for grace from someone who has mastered not the art of taking without giving would make me delusional. But now, I cannot stand the sound of silence. My heart, a fortress of Rome once, even if it shatters, kneels before you.
You were more than a woman, Cleopatra. A whole tornado contained silks and honey, a storm. Legend. You were a crown of fire glowing upon the night sky. The Nile and its drought. Accompanied by silks and honey, a whole bundle of a storm. While your move of combat akin to love appears foolish to me, suffice it to say that your essence, coupled with worship, turned me to ruin.
It is said that Caesar died only once, and that that was at the hands of his friend. For me, however, I have died a thousand times from the longing of love letters that will never be written, whispers that shall forever remain unheard and stares that will never be reciprocated. Now, when your name slips out of my mouth, it is accompanied by the taste of salt and memories. A concoction I drink alone every night, and one that I despise.
You went against and defied everything I was made to be. Rome, duty and order were all things I was bound to, but for you, my longing was placed on the back burner, and my laurels were exchanged. I fought in silence and with soft agreements. Everything that comprised who I am was sacrificed in return for the happiness your smile brought me.
Loyalty, love, and fate are three things I stood at the brink of. I leapt, not realising that you had already let go.
I found my exquisite undoing with you. The way tragedy blooms like perfume on the body is something only you could manage to pull off. You did not kiss to state your love for me, but rather the other way around. And just like that, you managed to conquer me.
When I still recall your memories, I feel the touch of your head resting on my shoulder — the illusion is warm, but in reality, it only shatters me further. Also, there are some moments when I miss you so much that your ghost takes the place of your body in my bed. That seems to be the ruthless aspect of love, doesn’t it? It torments us not with what existed, but with what was meant to exist.
There was Rome that I so generously offered you, and not through maps or armies. No, it was when I gifted you my unguarded soul, wrapped in love. Even with all that, you still decided to leave quietly. Not the loud kind that results in shedding tears and slamming. Your kind is the calm one — the one that leaves scented shadows while expecting no answer.
The poets and the politicians will describe us in histories unwritten about us. Someone will say that I fell in love with the wrong woman. That you were beauty masquerading as ambition. But only I will know the truth, or the illusion of it, that lies within golden shackles.
I wonder if you recall me when the wind blows, silence falls right after a laugh, or the night lingers way too long. Wherever your new empire is, does it resound with my voice? Or was I just a city on the way to greater achievements?
And yet, despite everything, I still do not harbour hate for you.
How would I? What even is hate for the moon when all it does is depart at dawn? You were never meant for me, but rather, for the legend long before I arrived. In the meantime, I was but a chapter in your epic as you were my entire story.
This is perhaps the way Rome descends — not with flames but instead, quietly. Not powered by armies, but instead by the reminisce of a woman who smiled for a brief moment for the sake of smiling.
In the end, we all turn into ruins — some made out of stones, while others from the heart.
I will make this claim that burns its bearer, and leaves no ashes. You were my Pompeii — gorgeous, decayed, and beyond saving.
So move on, Cleopatra, Empress of absence. Rule your new kingdom of forgetting. A man once called Augustus — letting go of a strong, built facade — shall remain here, shifting through the dust to what we never almost were.
If you somehow miraculously come across this letter, please be aware that I loved you not wisely, but so deeply, even death would bow to it.
Forever yours,
The Emperor Who Gave Up an Empire for You