Bend your ears to this:

“There is a wake, wrought
in the destruction you crave
and littered with your advertisements
for false joy.
It is in this storm that I seek you.
That I always seek you.

I seek you now, perhaps in the
same old ways, with the same old means,
but with a truer, more purposeful
intent. I have come to share with you.
I have come to give you a gift,
something much greater than you
deserve and much more powerful
than it pretends to be.
I seek to give you the truth.

There are times, when the
light grows wain and the
waves threaten to capsize
our vessel, that I look to you
for the comfort that even I
know is totally beyond you.

Feel free to pick me apart,
my every flaw a wonderful new
verse in the song of your
trials and tribulations.
I offer it to you. Chastise me.
Rend my cheeks pink and my
heart afire with anger.
Do what you will.

But please, and I ask only this
small favor of you, a pittance really,
keep your arrows from my heart.
You see it beats for another,
in many ways it always has.
I can no longer offer this part of
myself to you, it is no longer really mine.
And we both know it was
never really yours, though you
thought it was.

Curse my name, burn my home,
scare friends and family away
from me. It is all yours but for the
doing, and it always has been.
But this once, do me a kindness
and leave my heart to it's devices.
I have always left you to yours.”

This book is closed. The tale is told.