People are puppets held together with string
There's a beautiful sadness that runs through him
I watch him, while he works. Every movement is mechanical, puppeteered by his determination, his doubt, his fear, all together, flowing into and through each other, as the three of us do. The other is just as silent as myself, but he is biding his time. Waiting, as we all are, for the coming end. Â
I mourn him, while he works. Each of his feelings melds into a grief - for those he has lost, for those the other has taken, and, finally, for himself. He is not gone yet, but he will be, soon. We all shall be.
As he asked me to pray to the god he doesn't believe in
Perhaps, once, he was a religious young man, or perhaps that was just his fatherâs influence. Yet now, when his thoughts turn inwardly to me, he wants to pray. He desires it almost as much as he desires rest, desires an end. Yet he does not pray. I do, of course, and perhaps in some aspects we are the same, but the prayer is not the same. It rings hollow, without his faith, and I grieve that, too.
Time and again, boys are raised to be men
Impatient they start, fearful they end
Heâd been so eager to become more than himself when he started, a we rather than an I, that he did not expect the consequences. He has everything he set out to find - and it has left him a shell of himself, despite the more that he has found along the way. He lost everyone, including himself, and now, he feels, he may as well finish it entirely.
But here was a man mourning tomorrow
He drank, but finally drowned in his sorrow
The cowardâs way out, they call it. He tells himself it is fitting, that he is a coward, and this is right. He fled the war, he fled his family, his friends, betrayed and abandoned them. He may as well flee himself - and flee her. She cannot touch him with her silk gloves if we are gone. She doesnât know we are in here, hung over the sink, staring into a strange tincture that blends all the research together. He prays - no, he does not pray, because he does not find praying worth the time with what he is about to do. The sin he is about to commit is unforgivable, he assures himself, for there will be no time for repentance. Not that he has repented before.
He raises the strange, bubbling serum to our lips, too much, far more than ever before, and drinks it in its entirety.
Oh, he could not break surface tension
He looked in the wrong place for redemption
The pain that rocks us calls her in. The other and I both struggle against it alongside him, but when it is over, he is all that is left, racked in pain, weak, broken. The softness of silk runs over our skin, and he is powerless toe stop it. He failed, and he knows it.
But in failure, he makes his last discovery, even as she takes him against his will.
Don't look at me with those eyes
Years later I will stare at another young woman, my gaze uncannily like hers, as she demands him back. She will be so desperate, and she, too, has grieved him. I can do nothing but stare back.
I tried to unheave the ties
Turn back the time that drew him
No. That isnât true. I can tell her. I will tell her that I did as much as I could, but I have no power over him, not like the other, at least. I tried. I dabbled in his dark arts, I mixed his chemicals, for months after he was gone, not my first sin against his free will, but certainly my gravest.
I still feel him, I still sense him, but it has been too long, now, years later. Perhaps I am capable of sin - the worst sin, the inevitable sin of despair.
That was his sin. He despaired of himself, fled from her, fled to us, afraid and broken. And I was helpless to stop his end.
No, he couldnât be saved
She may try. And, perhaps, if I truly still sense him, perhaps she may succeed. But I am resigned to the role of our penitent, of sacrificing my joy for his soul.
A sadness runs through him
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