Not long now: the blazing dream of my head is crawling out.

Sophocles, Electra

Your body curved like a vow, and it broke, and the voice cracked like bone, the pale hair hung past your throat. I dragged you from the water and was sorry that it happened.

The person you used to be, I cannot remember. There are angels and monsters and malice inside of you now. The ashes found their way beneath your skin. I heard that you will change your mind, and your name, again, rather than lose each one in its turn. The underside of your wrist, paper-thin; the pale vertebral ridges; the softly feathered cicatrices of bone–the parts of you I used to love are fading fast. I will not delay them. You are less than memory; you are mere metaphor now. And you do not know me anymore.

Once I awoke in an anemic bliss, the tangled bedsheets soaked with blood and brine, just in time to watch the shattering of my warped and lovely world. It could have been simple, if I could have been strong. But I do not have desire any longer. I am repulsed by everything. There is no wanting. No pain. I have begun, once more, to consume myself: to satiate my writhing mind with limbs, with holy water, with rust. Useful, used, or using–the fractured crystals that sharpen my teeth, that enervate fragments of my skin–I am indifferent to refuge. There is not room enough beneath the earth to hold me now.

What happens to us, who have faced stranger odds? What happens to the woman who takes a knife to her own mind? Maybe we will awake to silence at the foot of the stairs; maybe it will soften us, and we will both be healed. More likely, though, I will someday cease to stay, and you will feel an absence in the corners of your soul.

After all, I’ve found my hate again. No credence binds me here. The flesh still stretches thin across the bone, the joints still move like memory, the tongue still carves verses between my ribs. But underneath, I am unrecognizable–an unfeeling darkness when the tide comes in. There is mere acedia behind these eyes: no burning to rift the iron skies of a life. My fingers will not grasp blindly at desire any longer. My faith has at last fled its long-faltering host. Each day, I care a little bit less. It is better this way.

Nothing will hurt me now, and I can meet the world unscathed.