[still in some sort of progress, if progress be the appropriate word]




“the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze
i said: ‘kiss me, you're beautiful -
these are truly the last days"

~ godspeed you black emperor



It was with a heightened uncertainty that I should ever meet her again. The trembles of her unsteady syllables, the allure of that conflicted gaze and the curiosity of her bewilderment bore no footprints of resemblance upon me now. All these I have unfastened with reproachable mercifulness. Yet, but for the grace of love have such muted burdens remain a burden, the forgotten sentiments unearthed once more, no longer hanging in a limbo of acquiescence. O, but the stars still shine, and brightly do they dance their dance of hope.

I thus took it upon myself to find her again.


*    *    *



Her last words to me were a distant “We shall not meet”, and her first were a comforting “We shall never part”, a cruel juxtaposition of strangulation and estrangement. Perhaps it was the sheer suddenness of the occasion or perhaps it was her beauty in the moonlight that overthrew me, but she was gone, in a flashlight stare of distress.

It went like this:

the night was a bleak auburn glow when I saw her, alone. supine against the fiery coaches of the streetlamps she lay, head lolled to a thousand distant reveries. we sat together, the cadence of the night drawing me closer in. she was staring at the nightsky, watching the stars dance with an understated passion.

“it appears,” she said, “…it appears I do not love you anymore.”

at first the sublimity of her words struck me dumbfounded, leaving me choking for words and reason.

“are you crying?”, I ventured.

“no; I’m bleeding.”

i nodded and lay once more, the cold stare of the moon brimming with palpable candour. her eyes bled with the passion and burden of loss and as she blinked, the gaze of the streetlamps flickered off, and all around darkness gathered.

a whisper in the darkness, “we shall not meet again.”

and then she was gone.


*    *    *



She told me her name was Ava the first time we met, and she was beautiful. Her eyes shone with an unfathomable intensity, lulling and distraught at the same time. Her hair was as black as night, lending an air of irreconcilable mystery about her person. But her voice- o, her voice! It was as though the stars themselves were speaking. It was of honeysuckle and mead, and would make the Furies themselves weep tears of sorrow.

I loved her very deeply.

it was cold, that night. the month of November held no place for beauty nor love. it was a month of greatcoats and steam. it was a month of obscurity and bleak observations. no, it was not a month where even a stem of beauty could be discerned.

but on that night, everything seemed…different. it was a night of glittering blackness, a night of pale and shadow, of distant plays and swirling madness. the stars themselves were out and the nightsky twinkled mercilessly, all an effusion of gas and light. it was magical.

We met on a game of coincidence and chance, on that night, for the first time.


*    *    *



[broken part, still in works]

As time took its clotting toll upon me, it has stricken me with realisation and futility. Too many days and nights have I spent languid upon ink and blood, passivity in my veins. Her words ring in my head again, like a daydream, or a fever. Truly, we shall never meet again. Words of such small stature yet such great magnitude. It was inevitable, inescapable, perhaps, my failure.

As I plunged through the mist and blackness, the sea seemed to beckon to me, with waves of fury and repentance. The moonlight cast shadows upon the water, shimmering and delightful, ripples of translucency and transcendency.

“for these are truly the last days”, she oft repeats to me, every time I was in her company.

I fell through the leaden sky in a daze of illusion and vagary, through a chorus of whispers and evanescence, forsaking the last vestiges of thought and reason I possessed. It seemed to last forever, this flight, but as I plummeted into the sea, her words disarmed me yet, a hymn or a chant to echo and torment me.

“the stars shall not weep at the fallacy of love, and we shall not meet again.”