Prologue
I couldn’t save you this time. Or the previous times; or perhaps, neither will I in the future.
The remaining animal parts of me trembled, broken. I fell to my bloodied knees, bones bare and shattered, down upon the rot of the earth. It was over.
Your lungs still drew oxygen from what little was left. Your bones are chained together, clinging by ligaments; your nerves tangled; your veins diverted into millions of misled pathways, begging for the directions back to your heart. I see my blood move within you. I watch it pump within the closed circuitry of the veins I mapped unto you, faintly knocking on Death’s door.
In this world, soft living things rose from your waiting hands—a world with no pain, labor, or fear. White light swirled your eyes before your body became unburdened by time. Then, you were gone with an exhale.
But this was only the world I imagined for you— one devoid of guilt, shame: Where there existed no sorrow, no torment. Your hands would remain bloodless for the rest of eternity.
However, eternity has long ended. Your blood stains my skin now. In the end, I let you fester within me. I let your blood soak into my pores, marinating into the atoms that built me.
At this moment, I recall you spreading out your hands and falling to your knees. Your forehead would kiss the ground, while the atmosphere drowned in moisture of the tears you shed. Forgiveness would hide her eyes from you, despite your countless prayers. She did not listen to you, for your hands were full of blood.
There, I waited. I waited for you to return, to be beside me once again. And while I waited, I dreamed of you. I breathed you in, still saturated in your crimson. Yet it seems I had not let enough time pass — eons were not sufficient for you. And so, the sea, miasmic with the oil, buried you underneath the earth's crust.
You were leaving. Always leaving. All this time, this distance; it appears, truly, nothing has changed. You always left. Everything that has ever been mine, becomes a nutrient transferring between the biogeochemical cycles of the earth.
“The world is ending. Isn’t it?”
Your final words vibrated inside of my fragmented bones. The more the eons pass, I wondered if it was the world ending, or if it was truly, me.
“Will you leave me here?”
You were leaving me.
“Goodbye,” I muttered.
In this world, I chose to say goodbye to you. It was a painful thing, and you cry long and hard. Although your eyes were gone, I caressed the remaining pieces of flesh hanging off your skull. Here, I did not cry. I let your tears speak for me.
Everything we had ever wanted, became a memory contained in a place incarcerated by time.
In the beginning, I knew this would hurt you. And in the end, I did it anyway. Did you ever think I was capable of hurting you to this extent?
I wonder what will become of me. I am not certain if there will be any of me left. For you did not know, I made you this way, so you could be the one to destroy me.
Look at where we are. Look around us. Look at us. Our future is married by sorrow.
A painful feeling of damnation flows through my veins. The creation of a new world begins. Against my will, I am condemned to see and feel the first breath of a new world. In other words, a celebration of life.