I torch my body like some proverbial ritual.

I’m strapped to the bed,
My brittle spine fracturing and breaking like fingers snapping back in the dark.
You’re bound to my bedside,
You weep a eulogy to the tune of my death rattle,
But your soft voice drowns underneath waves of static creeping through the halls.

You, alone in that room.
You, lying in what was once my bed.
You, holding onto whatever strings of me remain.

Me, alone in the kitchen.
Me, watching the microwave heat up last night’s leftovers.
Me, surrounded by nothing but the whirr of the dishwasher.

The buzz of fluorescents is our one likeness.
It hums through the hallway, the shut door not quite able to silence the hospital room.
It drones through the kitchen when I turn the lights on at two in the morning.

You watch the cross sitting idly on the wall.
The moonlight illuminating it barely enough to distinguish the intricacies embedded throughout.
And you find yourself asking,

Why?

I stare at the rosary in my weathered hands,
And I find myself pleading,

Why?

My body,
Cleaner than ever,
My conscience,
Hazier than ever.
My insides breathing fresh life.

Yet on the other end of the current,
I left you lying in that hospital bed until they pulled the plug.
I left you in that room alone,
And you wonder,
Whether your existence provided any comfort whatsoever,
Whether I found myself in you.

If I am now cleaner,
Purer,
Softer than I was in your time.

If you went out into the streets one last time,
Would you recognize me?
Would you pull up a seat,
Would you tell me you were proud of the steps I have taken?

There is a hole within me,
An uneasy emptiness which I try to fill by embracing you.
But the more I seek,
The farther you stray.

Am I so far removed that you cannot recognize your own creation?
Am I so estranged that my path was created to run parallel to yours?

I have defiled myself,
And in that process,
Thrown away a world I will never see.