perpetually blue

The sacrament I take to remember you-- in stained, rose colored glass-- is taken in blood, and in pain.

I try not to villainize you, after all before you fell you brought so much light to me and my creations. You are not the Devil in my story, rather a wrathful archangel.

You are deified in this place, distorted by childish trust. A Golden Calf leading me to slaughter. I have seen no burning bush but the words you spoke to me through smoke filled breaths are gospel to me.

that was your excuse for leaving. after you complained that everybody leaves you.

you tried forcing yourself into my space after you hurt me.

you tried making yourself feel better by blaming me for our falling out, because you tried and I didn't, right?

you tried acting innocent like we were mutually in the wrong.

I tried telling you to have patience. to let me recover. to listen to me. to believe me. I was there for you every day and every night, the second I needed space you disposed of me.

you tried, but you never tried hearing me, seeing me, you only tried what would make you feel better about yourself. You tried, I guess.

I'm starting to think I won't see you again.

Maybe the last time I saw you—squinting at each other in the harsh November light—was the end of all things, like the period at the end of a sentence. Like reaching the last chapter of a book to find the pages have all been torn out. Like watching ten years of whispered promises and raucous laughter and late-night conversations dissolve into a fine mist in front of my eyes, too scared to name the grief for what it was, for fear I'd realize all of it was pointless all along.

Someday, you'll get married to a man I'll never meet, and I'll like the photos on Facebook and Instagram and forget to be happy for you. Someday, maybe I'll run into you at some high school reunion twenty years out, and you'll be hanging on his arm telling everyone about your anniversary trip to Barbados, and we'll lock eyes across some seedy banquet hall, before a former football star trips over himself to eject cheap tequila and bar peanuts all over the parking lot, and when I look back, you'll have disappeared into the throng again. Someday, I'll wake up and realize I haven't thought about you in a while. Someday, I won't even think about you at all. Someday, I'll go to sleep at night and won't even have to pause and wonder why I ever did. Someday, years and years from now, maybe one of us will hear through some rotting grapevine or another that the other is dead or dying, and stop to remember with wry amusement how you always used to say we'd still be together on our deathbeds, and maybe then it'll finally matter. But probably not. Probably not.

Andrew McMillan, from Pandemonium; “uncivil”