You.
Holding me in the stale air of my breath,
suspended in the space between us.
A flower wilts;
dust settles.
Cast shadows grow impatient as they carry along without us —
pinned down by the weight of what is left unsaid.
And you just lie there with your peace of mind,
pale and cold.
My mind obliterated into pieces on a battlefield;
a civil war raging as my confliction rules my resolve.
A sickening push-pull of being torn between genuine grief and burning rage —
betrayal versus friendship,
both sides bleeding out in the trenches of the aftermath of you.
How dare you.
Expectation to weep an agonizing crest,
to harbor your ghost,
to summon the reels past;
obligated to feel while you are absolved from the pain,
the regret,
the shame of what you had done.
Your duelling resonance encumbers me —
a suffocating residue,
a stagnant sludge buried in my chest.
Pictures of before drag through me like barbed wire;
people’s words in eulogy and praise slam against me like bullets being caught by bone —
your ghost takes up all the oxygen in the room and I am choking to keep you alive,
while you have the audacity to keep still.
Untouchable in your frozen silence,
unbothered by my unsounded screams,
unable to reach you in your wake.
Is there anything else of mine that you would like to have?
To have me lay it down beside you to burn,
to become an ashen reminder of the worth of a friend —
a relic resting in a reliquary for all to behold.
Please, just tell me.
You never asked before.
Now, I stand before you,
offering it to you freely —
but a willing sacrifice dilutes the thrill of the hunt.
In death,
you have won.
The last word spoken in your last breath,
and I am left unable to speak.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.