in a dead language - vmon

ii.

Sometimes I think about how I won't be remembered when I die. When I tell you, you kiss me softly and rub your nose against mine until I'm smiling like I wasn't just thinking about—

"You won't be forgotten because I'll love you more than anyone can ever love, and they'll remember that," you say. "They never forget lovers. What do Romeo and Juliet have that we don't?"

"Hm," I pretend to think. "They're straight?"

"What about Achilles and Patroclus?"

I grin. "Our story can't be more tragic than theirs."

"Is that a challenge?"

"It's a promise," I say, and I know it's a lie because nothing is more tragic to me than the idea of losing you whether it's to something as mundane as a bullet wound or as unusual as the common cold. "We'll still be remembered without a tragedy tearing us apart."

"You're boring," you whine. Anyone else might think you're fucked up for wanting our story to be a tragedy. I think it's lovely how alive you are and how alive you want to be even when we're dead and gone, breathing through words, pulsing through pages, living forever through stories turned into legends.

I think it's lovely that you want to be remembered with me.

Sometimes I think about how I won't be remembered when I die. When I tell you, you say it's because I don't feel like I stand out enough to be remembered.

I think I won't be remembered because someday, the language we speak will die and the books we wrote will turn to dust. Why would a moment as fleeting as our lives be remembered for eternity? Achilles and Patroclus will be forgotten too, along with Romeo and Juliet and all the other tragic lovers in history.