morning dove (oc writing)

i am haunted by what i cannot remember. but without this wondering- the frantic scrambling of my mind which tries to puzzle out what you used to be- what would be left? i think, in the absence of my desperation to remember, it would be quite the lonely remembrance.

the other day i saw a cluster of edelweiss and it drove me mad wondering if they were a flower you liked. i couldn’t remember. it was like sand falling from my palms, the way your words were just out of my reach- slipping away eternally.

i got home and realized i had unconsciously filled a spare pouch with wild blackberries for you. like you would be there to eat them, because i can’t stand the taste, but you love them more than anything.

i almost threw up with the thought of it, that the berries would be left to rot because you are dead, and no matter how much i write, the ink on this page will not raise the dead. i threw them away, i’m sorry, i know you’d hate that.

i write like this parchment will somehow all stick together and become you again- like if i imbue every inch of the page with what made up who you were, you will still be alive, and i can use ‘are’ again.

you, dead, are still yet better than anyone alive, and i am a chest of stories about you. i don’t know where to put them all, when i run out of paper, and all i am left with is a love so overflowing it drowns me in it’s presence.

i miss you, of course i miss you, but that’s not the thing that hurts. i have missed you and longed for you as long as i knew you- but this is different. 

your mark on the world will never be made again, that’s the thing. i would not care if it was not by my side, if you were still making it, but you aren’t. you can’t. you will never effect the world again personally, only in ripples, and the thought of that tears me apart like i were run through with a blade.

in my dreams you haunt me, i close my eyes and i see yours like they have been burned into the back of my eyelids with your holy touch. in those dreams, the ones i tell no-one about, you lay your head on my shoulder and i run my hands through your hair. i never did that to you  in life, yet it feels like i am grasping a memory every time my mind conjures what it might feel like to have your weight upon my collar, your body slack in rest.

is this how judas felt, i wonder? must he have dealt with this crushing weight of knowing? 

that night, when you held the heart of god in your hands, i looked to your face and you looked to mine and i knew at that moment you would die. i could see it in the lines around your brow, that you had seen your death, and that it would be soon.

you pressed your forehead to my chest and what could i do but hold you? you, who i would bring down with my own hand, who knew this- you knew you would die, you knew it would be me, and yet you allowed it.

and you continued to allow it right up until the moment i drove a blade through your chest. you allowed it, even after, when i felt you crumble like dust and marble, and could do nothing but press my face to your hair.

i never knew you as the saintly figure so many saw you as, i knew you as nothing but a man. you were never larger than life, you were human. and you are dead.

i will never know what went through your mind, in those last days, and the thought of that plagues my waking mind. what plan had you made? what had you so hidden in your thoughts even i could not find you? 

you were not a god, not a king, you were a man and i loved you as one. did you? did you ache for me as i did for you? i will live the rest of my life never truly knowing.

i think, in a way, you have killed me. how much of myself is intwined with you? i do not know who i was before i knew you, i cannot remember, and with so much of it gone- is that not a murder?

i waste too much time thinking about you these days. there is so much to do, yet all i can think of is how much i yearn for you. you have cursed me, my hands forever strained with your blood eternally reaching for someone who is not there, and i almost hate you for it.