Philemon and Baucis

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The syringes made their way to your veins caressed by time, and she stood on the edge of the abyss, watching you step towards eternal silence.

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When your kiss intertwined with mine, I felt it was our fate to be together! Nothing else mattered, and no matter how old we might have been, in the image of our last dance, youth shone with purity!

I was your pillar, the axis of your world, the brute force, and you were my purity and immortality, delicateness and happiness. I asked you for one last dance, and you gave it to me. A face marked by time, tears, and laughs that still painted your childlike innocence, and your hands still covered the scars of my past.

We were two children who met by chance and never wanted to part. You were my bell when I could no longer bear the sound... You were my shelter when the sky ignored or mocked me; you were my light when I was in the dark. I was your brute force when you were too gentle to fight back; I was your strength when you were too weak and fell to the ground. We were each other's gentle breeze and sometimes storm; we were fluffy pink clouds and footprints left on sand.

Often, when we went for a picnic, we would stay alone until late at night because you always said that the world has a different air at night, calm and fresh. I would draw constellations on your skin and name stars after you...

You, Baucis, took my hand and asked me to sing to the stars, a song that would last eternally. Your beautiful name painted the star that brought us together! I promised I would die looking at it, thinking that I had an entire lifetime to admire your face, to kiss you good morning, to whisper "good night" through the pillows! And yet..

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Philemon...

Time... we no longer had time because the poison was in your soul, body, and mind. And tears fell on the cold hospital floor, but they dried just as quickly as clothes do when hung out on a scorching summer day.

Time... we were out of time and the sky cried salt over the frothy sea. Time... we no longer knew of it. Time gave us hope and it was the very thing that killed it.

The balcony where we had our first kiss awaited us every year like a bride and groom, and we disappointed it because we could never get there, to that point where happiness would be our story. Your light became my darkness with your answer: Cancer!" 

When the needles lost their track in your veins, your body left room for hope...

When tears were so dry that the end was inevitable... yet you still had hope...

When the feeling of helplessness was stronger than the idea of losing you... you wanted to give me hope...

When the sky was so clear, but I saw it so black, and I didn’t know how the hell I ended up in that dark place... you wanted me to have hope...

When the hospital bed remained empty and the caretaker changed the bedsheet, as if trying to cover the room's void, because a crime occurred there... a crime of time... you would have laughed, giving me hope...

When you left and I remained alone... hope was lost...

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Philemon...

Your veins were highways for the substances in your body that killed you slowly... The bed was your coffin, the sheet was your shroud which didn't foretell any resurrection... It announced your end, my end, the end of all times. Your heart was stuck in the past, beating almost in vain because you weren't there anymore. Your kiss was lost on your chapped lips from so much suffering, and me... I was the silent witness to time. You were everything to me, you were nothing, you were my demon but became my angel, and I remained empty, alone, belonging to no one. And that hurt like hell.

I cursed your God for what we went through and what remained because I couldn't handle the present, always living in the past. Did your God cover your sin with my soul, my thoughts, and my tears? Does your God know what you left behind? Does He know the desolation in my soul?

I didn't love you enough ... but you adored my darkness and didn't want to turn it into light. You knew it was harmless and never wanted to do anything with it. You preserved it like a porcelain trinket... and kept your hope. I carried respect for you like a shadow of my past and learned to love the present with you being my anchor. And no matter how hard I tried to love you that much, I couldn't. But isn't that proof of love?

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Last song

The balcony was empty, waiting for the bride and groom to promise each other the moon, stars, sun, and all the light clouds that would come into their lives. But the clouds were not made of light because the bride and groom never returned. Only tears remained on the hospital floor when the groom said he didn’t want to be forgotten but to always live in the bride's life, and that the only white she'll ever wear as a wedding dress will bear the stain of the past. He will be there when she follows her destiny, but what he didn’t know is that she would never forget him and would follow him beyond time! Their love, like the stars in the night sky, would continue to shine long after their earthly journey had ended. It would be a love that would follow them both beyond the confines of time, a love that would remain etched in the tapestry of the universe, an everlasting testament to the power of love, even when happily-ever-afters were elusive.

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"We promised each other vanity!"