There's a wall between us. I can only hear your voice when I'm pressed flush against it, every brick imprinted on my skin like that one time in the school bathroom when you pinned me and stole my breath away.
Your voice is so faint, so hoarse and broken filled with pain. My heart aches every time your voice cracks or you start coughing until you can't breathe.
What have they done to you to hurt you like this? To take your voice and tear it from your throat and fill it with so much dust and thorns. —and yet. And yet. Despite the wall. Despite the pain. Despite it all, You still try to laugh and coax a laugh out of me, and you tell story after story after story in an attempt to keep me calm. Even at death's door, your only concern is for me.
Can't you see your death is the surest thing to break me?