I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right
The second that she sees him, time becomes meaningless.
It is liquid, suspended in air; it is lava, molten in her belly. She had spent days (weeks, months) praying for this moment, praying for when the fluttering of eyelashes would reveal him on her peripheral. She had pressed her mouth to the cold ground of morning, tears mixing with the dust and the soot, and whispered her promises. She had slept racked with guilt and memories. Each moment had been marked with the beat of war drums—each moment had been tattooed with the pulse of yesterday. She could not close her eyes without thinking of the moment he had splintered on the ground; she could not draw air into her lungs without remembering that his lungs no longer could.
She had run to the meadow. She had raced, impervious to the danger, until she had found her. She had spluttered and pleaded and begged for a miracle. She had promised her life, but it had not been enough. The slashing of her jugular and the spilling of her blood did not have enough weight to balance the scales that now tipped from the gore and the despair of his own death. So she had offered more. Blind with pain, desperate in anguish, she had offered everything that was not hers to offer. She had sobbed, the very thought of it pulling her veins apart like faded seams, but she had done it regardless. She had laid it like forbidden fruit on the altar and fallen to her knees in worship.
In the end, she had been turned away.
She had been left to free fall in possibilities—neither given a yes or a no. She had been left to cling to the shred of hope that it would be accepted all while praying for another way.
If it were accepted, it would make her a monster.
It would make her a coward.
It would make her a demon.
But, when she sees him, her heart thrills, and the guilt falls away.
When she sees him, she drowns in her love.
She embraces her fate. She becomes the monster. She does not care.
She does not think about the guillotine that now stands above her neck; instead, she cries out—the sound as ancient and primal as the time that now dances without meaning around them. She reels toward him and collides into his side, wave crashing into wave, her mouth cresting his neck to taste the familiar flesh. The salt of her tears falls down her cheeks and press into her lips, glass and ocean mixing on her tongue until her sobs form a single word:
“Contagion.”
in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator