almerae

and so my life unfurled before me,

not in still frames, but in flames and shadows;

i followed the eyes of a deer,

wide and knowing, stepping soft through the undergrowth of a dying world

she walks behind two men-

their backs bowed by sorrow,

their words thick with ancient guilt

dante, god damn it, dante

as they passed beneath the archway of the damned

through the corridors of inferno, they wandered

where silence pressed against the bones,

and the air tasted of memory

a single tear fell, uninvited,

cutting down my cheek like a thread pulled loose;

and then i remembered,

god, i remembered it all-

it came back not like a whisper,

but like a wound reopening in the dark

if i were granted one pitying second to hold you-

just one breath in the hollows of your neck-

i would tear through death itself

to feel that silence again,

to rest where the world stops and begins

and even knowing it would end,

even knowing the grief would rot me to the bone,

i would still reach for you-

with hands blood-warm and willing

because what is ruin,

what is fire, what is falling,

what is being torn down to your barest bones-

compared to the silence of never having touched your name with my mouth?

let the world collapse,

let the stars burn out,

but do not ask me to imagine a life where i never held you-

not even once,

that would be the true undoing