A LETTER TO THE ICEMAN
Family is all we have in the end
Sometimes I wonder if you remember the long grass on those Sunday mornings; if you remember my tricorn hat and the smell of the earth. Those times we would share together before I grew too old and you grew too distant and we were both cold. Sometimes it's easy to forget we are brothers, don't you find? The detachment is a reminder.
Of course you remember those times. I know that you do. But I know you believe I don't, that I pushed it from my mind and never wanted to remember.
In all honesty I tried. When I was a teenager and you had found your feet in your new job working for the government. Weren't we all so proud? I was still stuck in that expensive school, surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to bury me beneath the ground I walked. This was your fault.
You left me alone in that old house. I brought home broken teeth and bruises but never told. Every day I walked tightropes; sometimes they were headed towards the sun, sometimes they were headed nowhere at all.
But I do remember those Sunday mornings. Those mornings we would sit in the long grass and I was a pirate and you would tell me stories. I think if you asked me I could recite every tale you ever told me down at the bottom of the garden.
Petrichor. Do you remember? You taught me that word as we sat at the bottom of the garden and it rained. My knees sank into the soft mud. You balanced the large umbrella over the two of us and we were caught for just a moment in the smell of the rain. We were unstuck in time. We were the only two left in the world. And for a second I didn't mind. The thought of sharing this planet with only you did not disturb me. I can no longer recall that feeling.
You taught me to love words.
And I have loved them. I have battled with them and danced with them; waltzing and fencing. They carried me above the rooftops and led me beyond time.
In this theatre production of life I grew up hanging on the fraying strings, believing I needed to. You taught me how to cut them down. I feared I would fall into the mud below. You helped me tame my jarred movements, you guided me through. When you left I fell back in the mud. This was your fault.
I lay in the mud, the grave of youth, and it rained and the rain filled the cracks in my skin.
A tree grew around your absence and I climbed it. When I reached the top I realised it was only a street lamp. The dull glow of the city. It lured me in with its poison. My veins welcomed new guests to their dark corridors; the sort of visitors who lurk in the doorways and the shadows waiting for you to make the first move, the kind who make no sound but smile when your back is turned, an isolated grin suspended in time. This was your fault.
I saw the bottom and I lay there and let it drink me in.
It would not swallow me whole. It waited as I fermented. It waited too long. A hand reached down. I floated slowly back up, resurfacing for air. The air was too fresh it nearly knocked me back down. But that hand still remained.
For a while I believed that it was your hand. I thought you had heard my endless silence whilst I crawled ever closer to the edge of the world. You don't need me to spell out for you that it was not. Was this your fault?
The hand caressed my broken skin, cradled my heart while I kissed the shattered parts of myself. Plasters feebly covered my wounds and scars but I couldn't find one big enough for your efforts. I nurtured my mind and felt the frost permeate my vessel; the frost I has learnt from you. And your head was turned. You found yourself lost in long grass and the echoes of two lost boys. Was that your reality? I think that was my fault.
Regards,
Your Arch Enemy