Like Shaking Hands With God

Some people say that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all—sometimes I wonder if those people have ever really loved. As the sun casts down from this insipid sky, the tables often turn, and what if the only reason I was put here was for you: to serve you, to protect you, to love you undying. The blank stone, the cobbled earth, ruins scribbled out in mysterious shapes and letters; messy scratch that once meant something—all signifying you. It burns me. As the fireflies dance, their tiny, flickering lights remind me of our last moments as real people. Soft and dim, small and innocent, uncaring as to anything other than the truth. Remember when we used to howl like mad dogs under fake moonlight, leaping and bounding through sleet and snow. Not even the souls of the dead could keep up with us. All I would say is “have no fear my dear, we have nothing more to hide” and we let the world embrace us. Every single inch of us. The infusion of yellow, orange, and red of twilight created such an infectious bite that we couldn’t resist dancing into nonexistence as the weight of the world came crashing down like the forceful waves that slowly swallowed the city, our city. A city of gold so bright that it almost outshined even you. “Endlessly,” she said, with horrible sounds as we held hands and spent our last night on earth. Bleeding black into the already soaked ground, the already dying leaves decomposing into the earth like our bodies will soon be doing. Refurbishing life, a never-ending cycle. “Endlessly,” she said. Like the stones at the bottom of a river, the city that we fell in love with will follow—we will follow. The smell of burning is everywhere. As days pass, my life is on hold. There is no time to breathe. I’ve found salvation carved into the trunk of a tree that’s dripping with the vile aftermath of defeat. There are no flowers, not this time. The ego of a shattered boy does sit, dark beneath the bleeding sky, speckled with the turning of foliage raining down as they scratch irony into the dirt. “Endlessly,” she said.