t-and-n

[t-and-n]

T:

Forever I'll wonder how I came by you. What mistakes did the gods make to put you in my greedy claws? How careless would they have to be to do that? And after I am gone from this world I don't know if I'll kiss their feet or string them up for doing this to me. To you.

You who loved me with such open honesty, when others only ever looked upon me with disgust barely veiling the fear in their eyes. So I presented all of me, the ugly and the uglier, to you because I knew you'd accept it all. And you did.

Forgive me for not being able to return the favour of your love. All I gave you in return was a push and a shove thinking it would save you. That child didn't know what else she could have done. I brought danger to the door that always welcomed me. I made you into what you have become now, didn't I?

Your eyes have turned from the azure skies blanketing lush meadows to the cold ice of untouched glaciers housing within them the end of a world. So much violence stored within eyes so blue, like the mocking sunny sky over a battlefield littered with corpses.

I have lost you once, and in the aftermath I thought I could live with it. You were just some girl I once knew. Sort of. Some girl whose name I didn't even know. But I was foolish and grasping at straws to escape the guilt. I had already burned one world for you. How do you go back from that?

Life began to scare my undead mind. How could I be scared of something that was so you? But you had changed too. I tried to save you that day but we both died.

Yet here we stand again, as the ghosts of two scared girls who burned in that inferno.

We are in the Underworld now Euridice and I'd look you in the eyes and dare any god to snatch you from me again.

[t-and-n]

T:

Every year I looked forward to the end of summer. The end of the heat and the first fall of the cool rain that swept away the dust and dreariness.

Because rain meant you.

You who brought with yourself the feeling of coolness that put even the first thunderstorm to shame, you who watered my parched soul, and somehow left it wanting for more. And every year thereafter, I waited eagerly for your return, my impatience buzzing like frenzied flies around a deer carcass.

How are you so beautiful, so happy, so carefree, darling? How do you do it? I used to be envious of you, wished to become you, to inhabit your skin, get a taste of what's it like to be you.

But looking at you, shining in all your glorious perfection, laughing with that chipped tooth, mud streaks on your face, that could never be me, darling. I wouldn't know what to do with the enormity of all that you are. It would be too much, I was not meant for joy so intense.

I didn't want to marr you, sully you with me and even now as much as I want to keep you away, I can't. Because when it comes to you I might have put down my envy, but greed comes roaring out from the depths, teeth gnashing in a plea to be loved, wishing to keep what it deems its own to itself. I am hungry and selfish and I would break the world before losing you. Because the world can be rebuilt, but you love, are one of a kind.

[t-and-n]

T:

Every year I looked forward to the end of summer. The end of the heat and the first fall of the cool rain that swept away the dust and dreariness.

Because rain meant you.

You who brought with yourself the feeling of coolness that put even the first thunderstorm to shame, you who watered my parched soul, and somehow left it wanting for more. And every year thereafter, I waited eagerly for your return, my impatience buzzing like frenzied flies around a deer carcass.

How are you so beautiful, so happy, so carefree, darling? How do you do it? I used to be envious of you, wished to become you, to inhabit your skin, get a taste of what's it like to be you.

But looking at you, shining in all your glorious perfection, laughing with that chipped tooth, mud streaks on your face, that could never be me, darling. I wouldn't know what to do with the enormity of all that you are. It would be too much, I was not meant for joy so intense.

I didn't want to marr you, sully you with me and even now as much as it want to keep you away, I can't. Because when it comes to you I might have put down my envy, but greed comes roaring out from the depths, teeth gnashing in a plea to be loved, wishing to keep what it deems it's own to itself. I am hungry and selfish and I would break the world before losing you. Because the world can be rebuilt, but you love, are one of a kind.

Forever I'll wonder how I came by you. What mistakes did the gods make to put you in my greedy claws? How careless would they have to be to do that? And after I am gone from this world I don't know if I'll kiss their feet or string them up for doing this to me. To you.

You who loved me with such open honesty, when others only ever looked upon me with disgust barely veiling the fear in their eyes. So I presented all of me, the ugly and the uglier, to you because I knew you'd accept it all. And you did.

Forgive me for not being able to return the favour of your love. All I gave you in return was a push and a shove thinking it would save you. That child didn't know what else she could have done. I brought danger to the door that always welcomed me. I made you into what you have become now, didn't I?

Your eyes have turned from the azure skies blanketing lush meadows to the cold ice of untouched glaciers housing within them the end of a world. So much violence stored within eyes so blue, like the mocking sunny sky over a battlefield littered with corpses.

I have lost you once, and in the aftermath I thought I could live with it. You were just some girl I once knew. Sort of. Some girl whose name I didn't even know. But I was foolish and grasping at straws to escape the guilt. I had already burned one world for you. How do you go back from that?

Life began to scare my undead mind. How could I be scared of something that was so you? But you had changed too. I tried to save you that day but we both died.

Yet here we stand again, as the ghosts of two scared girls who burned in that inferno. We are in the Underworld now Euridice and I'd look you in the eyes and dare any god to snatch you from me again.

[t-and-n]

T:

Here I am again. I had thought I was better than this. A woman of principles no matter what anyone else claimed. But blood drips down my hands, branching into rivulets as it reaches my fingers and falls with the rhythm of a heartbeat petering out. I stand now as a heretic of my own principles. Who this blood belongs to, I have no idea, maybe I'll find later when I sift through the faces for a new addition.

Faces that I steal whenever I steal a life.

Would you accept this blood sacrifice? Would you keep me close if I could be useful thus in your crusade? Would you let me protect you? I don't need your permission, I would do it regardless, but it would be nice to be wanted. I'll do the dirty work, principles be damned. Because even those were formed out of the aftermath of losing you in the first place.

I was hailed as the end of you. For ages I thought the last thing you ever saw was me (what could ever curse you so?). There were no bodies. None. I had stolen them and kept them within me, face stealer that I am. I would sift through the faces for one that could resemble yours and I didn't know if being unsuccessful was a blessing or a curse. Were you alive? Or were you dead and I could not recognise you from the horde of all the other faces when they overlapped mine. As my body morphed into theirs. As I became them.

Will the last thing I ever see of you be your face contorting at the thought of my betrayal even as your eyes betrayed your disbelief? Was this the real curse all along? To not be able to keep you safe? At that time the only thing I could hope for was that it was quick and painless for you.

But you survived. Like weed that refuses to be suppressed you grew, your roots digging into rock. As did I, at least that's what I tell myself.

We've been in the dark for so long, show me the way out. Or not. If darkness is where you wish to be, if darkness is where we thrive, the light being too unbearable for our eyes now, throwing the edges of this ugliness into sharp relief, revealing too much of the truth. If darkness is where you wish to stay, keep me with you. I'll fend off all the other monsters to make space for just two.

[t-and-n]

N:

I am not your God. I am not your salvation. And yet you make me into a messiah to pour all your devotion into simply because you must put it somewhere or you'll go mad. But the vessel that you call by my name remains empty for it's not a vessel but a conduit to an endless void. All your adoration goes through me and falls into the void and keeps falling never to find a receptacle.

All this adoration is for your own sake anyways. It is your own guilt you wish to soothe, isn't it? Don't like the sharp tang of guilt do you now? Like bile rising up and coating your tongue with the flavour of your past.

You keep flailing in the dark for some God, some meaning to tether your pathetic life to. You are no more than the sinful devotee who thinks he can absolve himself of all his sins by paying a tithe or bathing in some river he deems holy. You do it for yourself and no one else.

I want to see you spend your life agonizing over forgiveness and never find it, for the God you have chosen to worship is not a merciful one. You bathe in a pit of tar, kneel at the shrine of a lie, worship a mirage.

Leave.

The fruit of forgiveness is not worth the hell I'll put you through.

{Find the follow-up here.}

[t-and-n]

Foxglove, You have always been more alive than me, though I cannot see what you see, I know it must be the most beautiful of sights. The colours brighter, the sun warmer, the birds chirpier. The things you feel the intensity of it, the way it cuts into you and cuts deep, you who are marked by everything around you, you who see everything, and love everything. And I am lucky to be one of those things.

The places you've been, I know the trees rejoiced to have you there, you carry them with you, all your places. When I am with you I can feel your silent joy. Joy at just existing. Content to have a place in the ceaseless river of time. Witnessing the fact of you is like having in my hands the keys to a secret garden, and I just need to unlock the wooden door draped with vines to be let into your world. I see the butterflies flying beyond the moss covered walls the branches that refuse to be contained within, the kudzu that lies heavy like a blanket, the flowers blooming in bold colours, the bumblebee snuggled therein.

But I don't dare enter. I think it would kill me. You don't reserve your love for the pretty and beautiful, you love the ugly toad, the murderous viper, the deadly pitchers. You love the deer and the tigress that takes it down too. You revel in their starvation, and you revel in their hunt, and you join in the feast of the aftermath. Your garden is heaven, it's also a death trap and you tread ever so lightly and stomp until the earth shakes.

You are a woman of contradictions and you were contradictory enough to let me into your affections. What did you see when you looked at me? What that you couldn't find in your world rich with life? Is it self-centred to ask? Was it because we played house together and drank tea steeped from brambles. The streams we swam in together? The trees we swung from pretending to be heroes of olden times? The sticks we pretended were shiny swords? The stories we shared?

That pretend world of ours was so much more real than this one. None of this feels real, sometimes, I think I am but a brain swimming in a vat, my synapses hanging loose, unearthed, feeling only what I am supposed to, and you a being knocking on my glass container and that that's the only real thing that has ever happened to me. You are real.

The fact of your existence makes me giddy. And if you too are a dream, I hope I never wake up. But I dont think a mind such as mine could ever craft you. I think about what you think all the time. I catch myself talking to you all the time in my head. Every so often I think of some funny incident and turn to you but you aren't there. I explain strategies and make plans and consult with you. You are my conscience. I hope I don't bore you. I hope I keep you looking at my glass vat.

When we meet again, will you hide with me in the hollow of some old oak just like we used to and read each other stories till we fall asleep and wake as twin leaves that fall at long last with the dawn of autumn?

[t-and-n]

And when we are gone, I hope the particles that made us are always floating together. I hope these non sentient particles remember that they were once a part of us.

Unbeknownst to the people on the beach, we linger in the sand beneath their feet and in the waves that brush up to them as they take their evening strolls. I hope I am joined to you through some hydrogen bond, I hope when the ice melts in distant glaciers it doesn't separate the two of us, let me be shattered in the same instant as you in the giant machines built by men, may we sink to the ocean floor together and remain there for millenia.

I want to grow old with you and come to know every single wrinkle that lines your face, every single white hair that stands testament to our time together. I hope we spend a long time together so that I may admire every little speck of you but I fear no amount of time would be long enough.

I always feel as if I've known you longer. Tell me were the particles that make me once part of some pterodactyl's wings and you the water of some great lake that it migrated in futile search for and screeched in delight at having found?

And did we brush in flight as it swooped down?

Did you quench that creature's thirst?

And in doing so enriched me?

I hope we continue these trysts of ours long after we are gone just as we did before we existed. I hope that even when we are gone we exist as surely as the past.