Anthology of Sweetness

Dear Universe Part One

Dear Universe,

When it is my time to leave and I've done all I can, please remember his name with mine. When white candles and incense burn around my bed and bundles of sage, Jasmine and rose petals whisper in golden dishes next to me, remember how well he loved me.

When I die, roll me onto my side so that he does not know. So that my memory may reflect the comfort and peace of the journey I took with him. Please reward him for the smiles he shared with me and time he spent curing my madness. For they outnumber my good deeds by the thousands.

Forgive him if he was the cause. If my heart gave out from constantly beating against my chest like hummingbird wings. Or if he smiled at me and I forgot to breathe again. Or even if  his warmth melted me into magma bubbling its joyful song as it carved his name through the earth. If I must ask anything, let it be this one thing. All that I ask is that you don't speak his name over my grave.

For if I rise and see his tears, I may never leave. I, barely consciousness, will become the sun to warm his body, the sea spilling out of his eyes and the earth that cradles him  beneath his knees.

Do not remind me of the moon in his eyes or how his fingertips licked at my skin like a sacred fire, scorching my body to singe away my impurities and engulf me in desire. Or that he thrived on top of my buried body like flowers atop a fertile grave in the softest earth, blooming from the love of the elements.

Don't remind me of the wars we waged. Two soldiers in constant conflict. Battling only to surrender to each other under the stars and bring forth the sun with our lips.  Remember him. Stare into his eyes and be lost in the comfort that enfolded me in an endless saccharine abyss. Beware of the gentleness that treasured my strangeness like it was special. As if it belonged on a wall, framed in the Louvre.

Please do not speak his name over me for I will never leave. Eternally a whisper in his ear. A breeze lost in the wind. A memory long faded out of the minds of those who have forgotten to love me. But I will still stay with him. In perfect imperfections. There was never a moment when my anxious heart did not want to beat at the same as his, but I never felt more alive than when I stood on the makeshift tightrope that was us. Held together by spite, unrestrained emotion and nonsensical love.

But as I live, I will love him. My lips will buzz constantly with his name, happy to serve in the choir constantly chanting mantras of gratitude for his existence. I wish to possess him always. To consume him like a raging fire devouring him whole. But that would be a crime. An offense to every fiber of my being to harbor such beauty for my own selfishness. It would break my heart to cage him.

So live, my love. Be free in and out of my neck as you please. As your happiness pleases me, so much that looking at you paints the world its own faint shade of rose and sweetens the air. Roam with me in the grass. The flower to my honey bee. For pleasure is not pleasure if only for the sake of one's self.

It's not death that we fear, or at least not I. Not this so-called end, this deep dive back into the ether that has called to me since birth. Even that I do not fear. What scares me is living separate from the body that has loved me so entirely. Ripping your bones from my flesh. To suffer your absence would be its own lonely hell of cold fire that rattles my bones and stings in my marrow.

So if I go before he does, don't tell him where I am buried. Dig a deep hole so I am there when you come to find me again. So that I am not washed away by floods or heavy rain. But leave no marker. Set him free until it's time for me to find him again.