From my eyes flows a river in your wake.

 

One usually knows when one was about to make the perfect kill, call it instinct or gut feeling, but I always knew that you would be more than just a conquest; you would be my opus, a swan song echoing the chapters of our shared history. Our tale, whispered in the winds and passed down through generations like a gilded heirloom, would eclipse time itself.

 Amid the aftermath of a battlefield strewn with broken souls, we were the last soldiers standing in a coursing river of spilled life. Between us hung a thread of expectancy, a shared primal desire shone in our eyes, forging us into creatures meant solely for the thrill of the hunt and a need to inflict pain on one another. If Troy fought for something as futile as honor, the war we waged burned with a fire that transcended reason and bled of salt and tears; would you fight a war from which no winner would emerge, knowing that either way you would be nothing but a forgotten casualty amongst a mass of flesh, carrion for hungry crows and your blood soaked fingerprints writing tales of ruin, an empire falling to the ground that no historian would trace. It is nature’s law, that survival is meant not for the strongest but the most ruthless, and whereas you aimed for the heart, an arrow carved of your mercy to forever silence the symphony of my existence, I knew better, for this is what my life had been since the beginning, war was fought way before stepping foot in the arena, the art and brutal beauty of it is knowing your enemy, laying a map of their most fragile towers. The heart is a solid and high fortress, choosing to sacrifice itself before inflicting an everlasting torture on its people, stepping out head held high. No, I would aim for your most sore parts, your Achilles heel. You gave me the knife beforehand and you cluelessly showed me where to plant it.

In the realm of my own unraveling, I find myself bewildered, questioning the elusive specter that has danced through the corridors of my senses and altered the fabric of my perception. I don’t know what got through me, what it is that had clouded my vision and my judgment? How did I morph into this wounded creature latching with its fangs and claws to destroy anything in front of it? I can almost feel the resonance of my own tumult, as my fingernails delve into the soil of my psyche, unearthed grounds where the skeletons of my deepest and darkest nightmares have long lain to become entwined with the roots. I thought that I had put them to rest eons to go, that the burial rites where performed and a shroud will forever conceal whatever had remained, but I must have missed something, for these ghosts now stir, awakened, perhaps by the spectral glow of  the full moon that has began to loom on obscure nights of my existence.

 I could feel it in my bones; the time has come for the beast to rise from its sleep, and this time he wasn’t to be easily satisfied, I’ll have to draw enough blood to quench his thirst. I had abducted him to the forgotten lands where no man has set foot, but you found him, no you lured him into your hypnotic grasp and you provoked him like a an animal playing with its prey.

Your shadows were dancing on the periphery of my vision and your gaze was drawing blood from the depths of the well, and in that moment the world darkened around me and my words became my steadfast pugilists. They have always been the only punches I could throw, loyal companions leaping to my defense when the edges of my vulnerability beckon. From the nascent hours of understanding, I recognized the potent sway that letters held, their ability to shape destinies and provoke a pain like no other. Thus, I embarked on a journey of creation, assembling a legion of the mightiest warriors language could offer. I weighed the power each one wielded, the carnage a string of letters could do, each word a soldier, each sentence a battalion. A silent oath taken in preparation for an impending war, a conflict that I sensed lurking on the distant horizon, its approach heralded by the ominous drumbeats of your heart. I know now that all those trials were a prelude to this moment's quake, you, the final page where my ink will partake. I wished to summon all the words ever breathed in the air and the ones forever stuck and strained inside of every human to have once walked on this planet only to be eventually silenced six feet under the same dirt they thought to have conquered, to strangle and drown you under their weight, to see you fighting for a single breath of air. Leaving marks I know no medicine will ever be able to heal, a wound that time will only infect and fester; my woven letters became weapons of mass destruction, launched at you like bullets clawing their way deep into every inch of your being. Each syllable, a silent assailant leaving an imprint of irreparable damage, a loose cannon launching a cascade of linguistic munitions, orchestrating a permanent series of mutations that will forever be intertwined with the essence of your being.

 

As soon as I uttered those words, I knew they will forever be engraved in the labyrinths of my memory, a ghost that will claw its way from the obscure shadows of the past to haunt every breath I shall take in this lifetime and those to come. I knew that I will become a usual traveler walking the deathly paths forever frozen between the arrows of the clock that was hanging on the wall behind you that day, crushing the very possibility of my existence beyond that singular moment for I am nothing but a powerless creature lulled by the deadly serenade of the waves. I wish I could escape the spell under which I fell, to find a secret way to slip between the cracks of space and the loopholes of time, not so I could take back my words; for however I might be ensnared by the strings of this regret that will be my hanging rope, you can’t ever make a spear forget its destined scope. No, I only hope to be the shield, strong and true, protecting you from the venomous arrows I aimed at you, to let them tear through my flesh and forever find home in the river coursing through my veins, where remorse cascades.  What was once a spark in the dark became a hungry fire leaving nothing but ashes in its wake, Rivers and oceans couldn't quench the blaze of the inferno I unleashed in my relentless craze., so I stand there in the middle of it all, watching the flames burn their way through every particle of my mortal corporality, feasting hungrily on the air trapped in my lungs that was once a fertile land holding seeds of the most beautiful of declarations, an arboretum breathing tales of our history, a floriography hiding in its pages the only wealth I ever knew; fields upon fields of white daisies swaying in the light of day, petals pure like thoughts untold, each white bloom, a story to unfold. Bright yellow tulips in the memory of every smile you bestowed upon me like a warm ray of sunshine on a cold unforgiving winter day. Hyacinths and lilies that bloomed from the salt of my tears and the roots of my deepest sorrows, forget-me-nots that I planted in your name, an oath I will take to my grave. They are nothing but ashes now, a graveyard of all what I have lost.

 I lay a white carnation for an obituary I won’t be able to make, a silent eulogy for all that couldn’t be.

 

I stood witness to the massacre I had done, watching my words cascading upon you like water on delicate paper, each syllable a droplet washing away the poems written in your name and erasing the sonnets that were yours to claim. I wished to cradle you in my embrace and gently pluck them out of your memory’s nest like thorns from a rose, but the damage was already done and a crimson stream now flows. Only if I could weave a soliloquy of remorse as a tourniquet to tie around your gashing wound, and suck away the venom before it plants itself in the deepest chambers of your heart, but in the mere span of seconds something was torn, what once was a precious creation lays before me weathered and worn. My hands are now forever stained with your blood, a shiver ran down my spine as I became suddenly aware of the heaviness of the words I held in me, hiding in the valley between my throat and my lips, a deadly beast that failed to be tamed, I stand back in their wake holding a portrait now forever maimed. I tried to hold my breath, for if I suspend the life in me maybe I could exist in another dimension where time is a long forgotten currency, through thorns of remorse, I'll find my way to a meadow where redemption holds sway, I would spend my life a wanderer on his journey to absolve his wrongs, looking for the Elysian Fields where solace belongs. A celestial light will be cascading upon us; we will hold no memory of the past nor hope for the days to come and under the emeralds of the willow trees, we will finally lay our weapons to rest and watch the sun set on our troubled days.

 

 Achoik Tahiri