You lay there dying, and you want to give up. I can see it, I sense it with every shallow breath you take. Because you were too personally selfish, I died to give you my heart. Poetic in a sense, mine was the most technically beautiful of suicides. I would not do anything to compromise my pure and perfect heart.
I even called the ambulance, and wrote out, in the blackest ink I could find, that my heart was destined for you. Because, fool that I am, I loved you. And I hope you take this second chance more seriously, I hope to God that you don’t waste it in misery and anger like you were doing. This time, I want you to fight for beauty and love; fight for me. There’s so much to dream about now, so much you can do in this brave, new world. And believe me, I may be dead, but I’m still dreaming.
There were times when people warned you about me. They put forth all the usual sort of insults and suspicion … I was needy, I was obsessed, I wasn’t “all there.” I remember listening in once, standing frozen on the threshold between the bedroom and the living room, while your best friend expressed all his fears. I would trap you. I would lie to you. There is nothing I would stop at to have you. I was basically Kathy Bates’ character in Misery. And in a way, I guess he was right, or at least that’s what he’ll think. I would kill for you, die for you, and in the end, I did both for you.
Here you are, alive and breathing, but trapped. Because you can never say you didn’t love me, and you’ll have to owe me, love me, forever. I gave you, with my heart, the ability to keep on loving, living, and laughing. And forever you will carry me with you, inside you. You are me; I am you. Always.
And in this world where we are secretly alone, I can be your one and only God. I will be a messiah better than Jesus, a divinity more powerful than Zeus. You can set up a hidden shrine in the hills, where you’ll play a dress-up priest and a flock will come for rapture. Worship me like the ground you walk on, because I am inside you, I am pumping blood for you. Know that every breath you take is because of my grand sacrifice, because I had all the bravery that you lacked. Take delight in your hidden stash, brandy, and truffles will be your communion. There will be sawdust on the floors to gush up any sacrifice you pour for me. Small shepherds and shepherdesses will come to pray on the hard floor; knees will bleed in hope of deliverance. Devotees will live for love, that one pure thing many have lost or simply never found. That thing I knew, that thing I lived for, more than anyone else.
When you come to me again, on that bed, when I’m burned into your eyes, you’ll know ecstasy like nothing else. You believe in something more than death, more than the cold, hard ground, because I gave you the ability to see beyond it. The box is body, not soul. You were too blissful to ever dream of heaven and hell, to think I might punish some and reward others. Instead, you imagine some eternal: love, life, bliss, glory, rapture, divinity. It’s only right that I become your new God because I always worshipped you as a divinity. Your person possessed me entirely. There was not one moment of any given day when I was not occupied with thoughts of you. Some will call me unhinged, call me fanatical. But the beauty of language protects me from such insult. What skeptics call fanatical, I deem passionate, consumed with ardent and pure admiration.
I healed your heart; I never aimed for your faith. I wanted you to believe in good and evil. And choices, decisions, inevitability, the greater good. I gave myself up for you: heart, body, and soul. I wanted you to take it and do something. Seeing what you’ve done with this second chance, it would break the heart in my chest, when it still beat to the tune of my beliefs. I want you to know that worship is a beautiful waste because everyone is just human. And in the end that’s what I learned. Watching the world fade around me, knowing I’d never wake up from this sleep. That moment taught me just how wrong my worship of you was. All my sacrifices and all the homage paid to you in these past five subservient years of my life won’t really matter when I’m in the cold ground. You were a God to me, the ultimate concern, as it were, but you won’t grant eternity for to soul. I may be glad that you feel comfort in passing, love in death rather than fear, but my God, why oh why were you always so weak and gullible? Why would you waste this second chance like I have wasted my first, caught up in idolatry and the worshipper’s malaise? In the end, it just has to be enough to believe, I suppose, and in my last moments, I lie there doubting it all. So, just believe, and maybe you can achieve eternity.
Pass the brandy and truffles. Amen!
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