Fifteen years

A poem about a friend that broke my heart

Photo taken of the moon by my love, Alex

Have my devotion burned ever so brightly as of right now? As I am standing at the threshold of our friendship, a moon to your night sky, have I ever been more honest? My heart is bleeding, my bones are bare, I am giving you everything I have. Please. We were girls, shaped and made a fool of our childlike wonder, not even eleven years old before something wicked threatened to slither into our safe haven. To turn our best laid plans into reveries, now long forgotten, now long gone. You, the knight of my worst ideas, not of blood but of bonds made of gold and silk. We threaded that bond with our bare hands, blistered fingers and all, until a bright and beautiful veil lingered along our shoulders. We held fifteen years in our hands, proud like we had won a ribbon, and I watched it die in my arms. Watched that veil unravel a sickness in you. Lifeless, cold and white, the blood that used to rush to our cheeks in laughter has turned into dirt, this body returned to the soil. Fifteen years decomposes into the ground, there is only darkness, worms and earth. Fifteen years I have confessed all of my sins at your altar, fifteen years you have held my faith in your palm. Fifteen years I have picked up the pieces of your dying body, I have searched the earth for all the limbs you have lost, I have given you my everything, every last drop of me has been reserved under your name, for a friend turned sister, turned into a split image of my worst nightmare. As much as I have given you, you have taken from me. Greedy mouth gaping for my words, only to spit them out again and again. My love has tried its best to linger in your darkness, tried to make a home out of the rot, but I cannot bare it anymore. Please. I can not bare it anymore. At times, I think of how you have chosen this. Rot over me. Him. Over us. Him. Over yourself. The man who slithered into your haunted chambers, made a home out of your misery, made a dead woman out of you. The man who saw you, saw the gold you carried in your arms and robbed you of everything you ever had. The man who made you a fool, butchered you to fit his sinister fantasies, butchered everything you could have been. Then I think of your face, a face of innocence, a beauty beyond words. Your youth, a pink lady apple, you are as sweet as can be. My dear friend. I have held your broken heart for fifteen years. Like a hound, I have licked all of your wounds. And all I can picture is his muddy, filthy fingers tainting all of your goodness, all of your youth has turned into ash and now it has become his to prey upon. In the midst of everything, I cannot help but to bury the blame in myself. I could have saved you. I could have saved you. I wanted to save you ever since your green eyes had turned black from the rot he put inside you. I wanted to save you ever since I met you fifteen years ago, when we were girls, and it is devastating to know that I would have if you let me. It is devastating, I am horrified, I cannot bare to think of losing you. I am heartbroken to learn you cannot be saved.

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