Reincarnated Poet: Hello all! This, as promised, is an installment of my series "Songs to the Grave". It's a bit off the beaten path as far as my stories are concerned, as it centers around a character I rarely write from, as I felt she was shallow and ill adapted to the actual plotline, but it works well I think. Also, this is from Psalm 38, I don't mean to offend any religious or antireligious, it was simply a quote about death that fit the character. I make no religious affiliations for this site, as I feel that they tend to draw from a writer's ability to write.
The Things I Can't Live Without
"I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. My heart throbs, and my strength fails me. And the light of my eyes, even thought it has gone from me."
~ Psalm 38
They tell you, when you're young, that the prince marries the princess (or the lowly stable girl) and they ride of on the prince's white horse and are happy ever after. They tell you that love conquers all. They lie. They lie through their teeth because they don't want us to stop trying. Maybe, if they lie enough, the world will hear and change its ways. It hasn't yet, and I wish they wouldn't have lied to me.
He's gone. He's gone and he's left this…some might say void, but its not. A void is something that is empty, massless and hollow, but what he's left isn't. It's like a dead sponge. There, taking up space and mass and time and energy, but worth next to nothing other than something to think about and contemplate until it slowly degrades away to nothingness. He just doesn't seem to degrade. He's there, in my gut, amongst the liver and intestines, the heart and the lungs, the things I can't live without. The glorified to the disgusting. He's there, in every inch of me, and just like a kidney, I can't live without him.
He swore it would be different. He wouldn't fall to the one thing that he loved more than me. The Power. But that's not really enough. What is power. It's strength and control, but what this was was so much more. It was thrill. Addiction. Strength. Control. Fever. Adrenaline. Fear. Passion. Heat. Desire. It was all encompassing, and not only has it destroyed him, but it has stolen my strength. I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. I just can't die. I live. I breath. I eat. I sleep…no I do not sleep. Not truly as I used to, tucked against his side.
My heart throbs. It does, but I expected that. It's all the other things that I didn't expect that are killing me. My muscles seem to quit anymore. My strength fails me. I hear him, laughing, and I know he's not there. My ears fail me. I feel him, late at night, stroking the side of my arm gently to wake me up. My skin fails me. My eyes, I look at with contempt. They've changed. They felt with him. The shine, the bright light that make me me, has gone with him.
I wish to speak with Evelyn, but she's too far gone to talk to anymore. The bottle finally claiming her liver and slowly her mind. I want to tell her that I understand, that we can share this burden together, but it's too late. I've seen the path she walks and I see the path I shall take. They look the same. They feel the same. They smell and taste the same. The same fine cognac of pain and sorrow laced with a layer of regret and anger. It is not what I look forward to, but when the world has stolen my lover, my life, my husband, and my best friend, what do I have to look forward to any longer? With the carving of his headstone my world ended. "Here lies Caleb Danvers" it boasts, as if the world had been trying since his birth to claim him, and in small tiny scrawl underneath, I felt the need to defend him, "My life, my love, and my light."