Everything is in shades of lilac, the sky, the trees, the raspy wind that swirls hoarsely up off the water's surface. I walk along the edge of the world, and he is with me.
Hand in hand, we sit at the water's edge, the lavender willows reaching down towards us gently, clutching at my sleeves, urging my soles up from the earth. They call me quietly in breathy whispers to journey upwards into their loving arms.
But I stay, for loving arms far sweeter wait beside me. He slumps against my shoulder, and then past it, pushing into my sternum, and I wrap myself around him. I cradle his tender body, feeling the soft prickle of his hair against my cheek and smelling the sickly sweet perfume of his flesh. Fingers woven through his, I watch the violet sky darken as the pale sun dips under the velvet waves. For one fleeting moment, life had substance, and the illusive was within reach.
Then the tendrils remind me more urgently that I am not here to stargaze. I must memorialize the first love I have ever known, that is all. Untangling myself from the dearly beloved, I rise, looking down at him who has no faults.

The slit eyes widen…

I coo gently as I reach for him,

… on the turtle that fell…

clutching at his shirt, his arms, his chest,

… for the gentle eyes of…

pulling him slowly closer,

… a wolf in a shell…

not to me, but to the water.

… a dark liquid drips…

Carefully now, through the rushes and cattails

… down the fleece of a sheep…

our foreheads pressed together and with one final kiss,

… who knew a wolf could…

“goodbye, mon amour”, I whisper and push

… so tenderly weep.
It is done.
I return to the shore, alone this time. Though in a way I was always alone, accompanied by nothing but an empty shell that I so crave to forget. The weeping trees welcome me feverishly, their long fingers caressing my neck, pulling, pulling. Take me home, I pant, and as they drag me higher into their branches, I am free at last.
They still haven’t released me though, many waxings of the midnight smile have come and gone, but a part of me will hang there forever, suspended in time, swaying in the wind, sinewy tendrils embedded in my flesh. I am leaving that reality though, transcending so that I may go on to join the last love I have ever known.

He said nothing of her as there was nothing to be said.
          She was unremarked upon because she was unremarkable in every way.
          Her hair was bland, coloured and styled as every girl her age, her makeup done so as to make her features as indistinguishable as possible from all the others. Her attire was inorganic as well, and even the chains around her neck and wrists were standard.
          She lived in a void, not blanketed in the darkness of ignorance, nor in any particular hue of morality, but instead covered by a blinding white mist. It clouded her judgement like a film across her eyes, obscuring all colours and turning them a hazy grey. It was a mixture of every idea ever conceived, every judgement ever placed, every mercy every extended, every war ever started, and every life ever ended.
          She was inoffensive in every way, and whenever a flaw was found in her, she laboured the sweatless work or removing that part of her and thowing it to the ravenous void.
          Eventually all of her would be erased, and she longed for the perfection of her new body, given and created, of and by, the void.
          She was close, so close, and was otherwise indistinguishable from the milky air she clothed herself in, her form vapour-like and pale itself.
          She discarded her own name and carved upon herself a new one, the only thing left that she had chosen for herself.

          "Philosophy"