If I could save even one person, maybe I would speak.

、、、、

Her flesh wrapped around her like kudzu on a tree, parasitically engaged in what others yearned for.

If you can't rely on blood, who do you have left?

So I stayed. Because no one would come near. How kind she was. How gracious and loving and loved.

、、、、

Her skin became cold. The very ***** dedicated to masking her advanced structure became like a marble slab left in the snow. That flesh that cradled her meaningless meanings hardened like the exoskeletons she imitated.

She was an insect through and through.

、、、、

And even if cold was the absence of heat, the left-behind contraband someone else came to cherish, she emanated the very invasion that enveloped her.

She radiated her icy salvation.

、、、、

And so when the time came that I was able to touch her...
When it was upon my own flesh I would feel what she refused to feel, she grasped onto me.

As if she longed to drag me into her abyss with one last throe, one last labor of love for her blood.

、、、、

My fingers never fell off, but I was frost bitten. My organs never failed, but I was shredded apart by the sting of the sobbing wind.

、、、、

I didn't become her marble carcass like I should have.

、、、、

She didn't take me with her.

I couldn't save her anymore.

Not even if I had devoted my life to doing so. Never again. She left me behind, and I was cold too.

、、、、

My skin is not chilled to the touch. My muscles are not the remnants of a frozen cicada shell. My skeleton is not made of the icicles left to melt in the sun's triumph.

My tendons ache in the wake of an ancient breeze that blew by far too late.

、、、、

I am not a slab of cold marble.

、、、、

I am a starkly darkened visage to behold and not be held, forever turning over and over,
never ceasing and always yearning for that which never was, and that which will never be.

I was only for their sake. Never mine, even if I pretended.

、、、、

This endless daydream that expands before and behind me, that twists in tendrils that are deplorably mine and

soak in the oily water that inisists on being my keeper... I will not let go of the ribcage it offers to my grasping hands.

I will bear who I am. I am my sickness.

、、、、

I will plunge into the needy and engorged expanse of shifting flowers and lodged viscera.

I will continue to encase and cease.

、、、、

Forever in my head.
Forever in my skull. Forever tapping in my cage. Forever clipping my scrawny wings. Forever sincere.

、、、、

I loved her, and I couldn't
save her.

She was dead, and I couldn't save her.

She was alive, and I couldn't save her.

、、、、

What remains?
Irreparable me.