A Dowry of Blood

What is more lovely, after all, than a monster undone with want?

So I will put down my pen. I will tuck these pages away in a drawer and tuck the memories of you away in my mind, and I will go out into the world and live.

I have one final promise to make to you, one I hope I will never break. I promise to live, richly and shamelessly and with my arms wide open to the world.

I do not know if I have justified my choice to you, but I think I have justified it to myself, and that has brought me peace enough.

And so, my love, we have come to the end of our lives together.

My memory of that evening is one happy blur

Desire makes idiots of all of us. But you already knew that part, didn’t you?

Magdalena sighed into my kiss and I knew I would kill for her, die for her, do it all over again and then some.

Laying with her made me feel so vibrantly alive. It was almost enough to make me forget that I was already dead

Slowly, the noose of your love was loosening
around my neck.