We Are Nowhere; It’s Not Now

Midwinter draws to an iridescent close, and the spring snarls slowly, like a promise, from the soil.

A mirror is shattered, and formed. My could-have-been brother still sleeps beneath the thawing ice, and I speak a language that you cannot understand. I know that you tried, I know, but even so, you became a thing that wasn’t. Murmuring half-truths in the half-light, I swear–I thought you were a life beyond living. But this monument to discontent, this damned Babel-tongue, the hushed, rolling, coil of words, of cowardice and false comfort, of burgeoning disquiet–do you choke on every once-promise made? How could you not give a damn? Why on earth did you lie?

I thought that I loved her, because she lives like an echo: every word that drips from her mouth or her pen is just the better part of another being. She reflected my best, and my worst, back at me, and I loved her for it. I mistook her deficiencies for virtues, her weakness for resolution. I did not recognize what she was, because I could not recognize my own self veiled beneath the skin of another. The mistake is mine; the catalyst is her. If she is anyone, beneath that groveling artifice, then I must confess that I have never truly known her. That body was merely a mimesis in which I learned what not to be. There are no secrets between us anymore.

Her imprint, desirous and desirable, in this bed we used to share, is so far faded now. It belongs to others, of course, to the dark-haired reminiscence, her roiling moors and strains of a rough, nascent tenderness, the way she tugs one pearl-smooth thumb across my lip—she steadies and thrills in one fluid motion: she tastes like a breaking wave. And of course there are others, so many others, the woman with the name that runs like rain through the streets, each assertion working like volition between the margins and gaps of my soul. And the one like a world beyond what I have known: enchanting, radiant, seraphic, capricious—I love her as I love what could never be. I love them all.

This absence that you manifest is nothing to me now. Because the vacated space belongs to others now, yes, as they come and go with the rising of the moon—but mostly, it belongs to myself. The people I loved left in cowardice and cruelty. I am the best thing that I still have. I am beyond your false providence. I have healed with such brutal precision, with so little mercy, that often I wonder what I have become. But I love, and I feel, and I trust again. So I am content.

Sometimes I wonder. If she stays any longer in that garden, will she endure? I know the place where she erected her tomb. The weeds will curl around her throat, like cigarette ash in our mouths, my flesh—she will hurt like I have. I want to save her, spare her, but why worry? This was her choice, not mine. She has already been crucified, half a dozen times over, for her salience and her sins. No one is to blame but her: she climbs each oaken cross herself. Why should I be privy to this most recent Fall?

At times, I wish that I could still make myself care. I wish that I could feel that affection, that adoration, just one more time. But again, as always, the passion becomes disgust, the emotion slips into unreality, and I wake to the vast, frigid expanse of apathy. I feel nothing. I feel nothing. I do not even remember what she tasted like. I do not care. She has become real nothingness, like she always wanted. She has passed away like a shadow. All I can recall is my own wasted time.

I loved you, I loved you, I hardly knew you. You were a mirage. You were mimetic despondency. And so it goes on. Terrors, like clockwork, burn through the milk-white flesh of the world, and when the memories fade away, I am left alive.

Whatever this feeling is, whatever our memory entails, I will endure beyond the irrevocable collapse of your burning artifice. Do not write of me anymore. Do not sing. Do not care. Forget me, please, and leave me alone. You were the last lie I will ever live. You are the last broken promise.

My scars are yours, my love. May you wear them well.