The Grey
2022-05-21

***

Even though I have multitudes inside me,
without you by my side, I feel null and empty.
I know that by myself I'm still whole and complete,
but yet remains a void inside, you, the missing piece.

I wonder, do you also feel
on occasion the urge to self-negate?
"If I can't have you,
I can't have myself,
and I don't see any point in anything else."
I wonder, where did you and I learn to hate
ourselves so?
Who beat us down? Who pruned the branches?
Who commanded us to kneel?

"Do you know why
I bothered so long with this dreadful life?
Why, even facing down an eternity
of servitude with no way to become free,
I still struggled on, bothered to take breath?

Tell me first, Lethe, what do you expect
to be accomplished upon your death?
Who do you think will be saved if you manage to die?
What salvation given? What hope signified?
Do you really think, the moment your breath comes to cease,
nobody ever again will from violence bleed?

I toed for five years the line
between ineffectual death and a pale shadow of life
because I prayed, I dared to hope,
even if it ebbed more than it flowed,
that one day would come a world where I'd fit
and I'd have a reason to cut loose and go.
It didn't have to mean passing through an Eye.
It could grow
inside the shell of the old
and, when ready, hatch, blossom in the light.

Before the Town, before Yewiffe,
before precious Sablade,
you were already my Anima Mundi,
my soul of the world soon on its way.
I crawl into your arms and think,
'This is where I belong.
This is where I am supposed to be.
This is where my heart says
I should spend eternity.'

Lethe, I love you because
you only ever wanted
to set me free."

***

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
