i still dream of you...and the world drops dead

I still dream of you…and the world drops dead. Again and again. I dream all day long. Dream incessantly and deliriously. Maddening dreams. Dreams that bring me to the cemetery where you will not remain entirely buried, where I remain entirely bewildered. Dreams that bring me to the bridge that commences where worlds fall apart. I do not wander into this graveyard willingly. The unholy tombstones, the overgrown ivy, the decrepit trees, the watchful statues resurrect around me from the shards of broken memories that relentlessly tear and scratch beneath my skin, memories that haunt and animate. 

The Ancients found me on this bridge 2 years ago, standing on the precipice of where my innocence would be forced to depart. Sacrificed for a false promise. Lost to violence. The Ancients knew what was to come. They tore across the bridge, flying with the wind of another planet. They rattled and writhed beneath my skin in a desperate fit of silence, but I remained still, entrapped by hazel eyes so marvelous at hiding lies. The twinkling city lights, the moon hanging in the sky, the statues and shadows, I had a feverish taste for something magic, something tragic. 

And so, the frozen faces lining the bridge witnessed the weightlessness of a spider’s web settle upon my childlike spirit. Sickness wells up inside me, my guts twisting at the imminent loss of autonomy, of self.  I watch the moon’s shadows dance across your face. My breath catches at the tears shining in your eyes. My heart clamors in its bone cage. I know what is to come. The black glittering water beneath us beckons me. The Ancients are sirens now in the river calling me to the inky depths of the ancient city’s underbelly, an afterlife more survivable than the one that is to come. 

I love you, he whispers. 

The Ancients scream. But I refuse the brokenness of hopelessness. The will to be fearless, the wild desire to trust animates my throat to mirror the fatal words. My undoing. I changed without planning to… 

Instantly and unbeknownst to me, my innocence is reborn a ghost, a tragic disembarkment, a whisper in an elsewhere far from a broken and cruel world. She wanders the bridge, lingering between the statues, folded between the fabric of an afterlife, singing sweet melancholic melodies to anyone sensitive enough to listen. The Ancients welcome her into their embrace, for she is one of them. And I was not sensitive enough to listen. I refused her screams. And so a shattering was to commence—

I still dream of you…and the world drops dead. I find myself in this cemetery again and again when I encounter warmth, a trepidatious kiss, an intimate touch. My ghost screeches in terror, desperately moving my body into contortions of flight. She carries the memory of something breaking inside. Someone breaking inside. The knock from the outside is persistent. Threatening. Dominating. Fear cracks and quakes on the inside. It threatens an irrevocable shattering. A shattering from the outside always shatters something within. Your body broke into mine. It held mine. And then it broke inside. Impaled by the safest place—you. Whimpers are my only screams. Choked breath and blood the only lost signs of your crime. My irrevocable shattering. I changed without planning to…

I still dream of you…and the world drops dead. I find myself fated to this graveyard, forced to wander the desolate and murky territories left by your shadows, shadows that twisted my mind, that tore through my body, that strangled me to death. I traverse this haunted cemetery as a ghost myself, but where you won’t remain buried, I remain deeper than six feet under. I am curled in a ball on the bathroom floor, a blinding white light flooding my mind, stealing my vision. You had dealt the fatal blow, and I had shattered into light. Bodyless. It was the moment the girl that loved you finally died, the moment the hope I had been clinging to vanished. It was bliss. I had finally escaped the body that was the repeated site of your crimes. Nothing could touch me. I was free. I was safe. I had no desire to leave this spaceless space. But you picked me up from the bathroom floor and carried me to the bed. You laid me down. You put the weight of your body on top of mine once again and pulled me from the light. I whimpered no! as the brutal force of you pulled me back into my body again, away from the light, away from the safest place I could find trapped inside this body of mine. My eyes found yours and I turned cold. Lifeless. I changed without planning to…

I still dream of you…and the world drops dead. Again and again. I dream all day long. Dream incessantly and deliriously. Maddening dreams. Dreams that bring me to the cemetery where you will not remain entirely buried, where I remain entirely bewildered. Dreams that bring me to the bridge that commences where worlds fall apart. I wander into this graveyard willingly. I search the shards of broken memories for reflections of a self that is my lovely ghost. I search for the elsewhere where the Ancients sing. And this time, I dare to listen to her when crossing the bridge.