Every now and then I fixate on the deaths of gods and kings. Maybe I should try looking outside my heart for once. Through all this time I’ve found that out here in the astral field, no one reigns supreme. I walked the plane of symbols without meaning, stepping in and out of graves that weren’t mine. The air grew thinner with each passing breath as I scraped my weighted sole across chalk outlines. What if this is all that I get? What if I’m the last one out? I can’t stand to think of what happens next. We sleep in body bags. The shrines have collapsed, and they can’t be put back together. Our hearts can’t prevent fate, so what fucking use is there in drawing maps that only lead to dead weight, when we’re just running an endless marathon, only to dig our heels into last place? The structures that govern death are making room for another. We triumph under the knowledge that someone was listening, but when we know that none of it matters, how do we make sense of ourselves? How do we move on without a word when the guillotine hangs overhead? Andromeda draws near, pulling us to rapture. The clock won’t turn back. Our hearts can’t prevent fate. I dragged a corpse from the shore to the setting sun. I buried it in the sea, and loaded my gun. Nothing will save me. No one to make things alright again. I burned so many bridges that I don’t even know where I stand. I lived in the eye of the storm, and I want to leave, even if it kills me. I want to make sense of it all, but I’m broken and weary and ready to know demise. I saw everything, but I wired my jaw shut. I cut my tongue on broken glass with see-through words and the stones you threw at them, but this is all I can do, so I bleed onto pages and pretend that everything is fine, because if I don’t live a lie, then I can’t live at all. This arrangement won’t work for me, I can’t breathe without the mask. I’m learning the truth of the one thing I fear: love can’t stop death.

The clock won’t turn back.

Love can’t stop death.