A Midsummer’s Nightmare

(A Requiem for Martyrs Who Don’t Need Absolution) 

Dear Stranger, 

I dreamt about you. 
In this dream of mine I saw you smiling, 
not with your lips but with your eyes. 
And I lost myself in their green. 

I could feel the warmth in your gaze, 
the same tenderness you once wove into your words, 
before you let me fall from your hands like I had no name. 

Even in dreams, I fail to hate you,  
Though the way you discarded me built a deafening echo, 
It is ‘you’ I now fear within the silence. 

In my dreams, you show me not through your lips, 
but through your presence of how much I meant to you. 

Was our eternity shorter than a moment? 
Just yesterday, I believed we were infinite. 
But belief, too, carries its own quiet lie. 

When I first saw you, 
I felt the heavens had not forsaken me yet,  
I told myself, “This is it, the end of all waiting”. 

But by the time I blinked, you had already vanished. 

Where did you go? 

Do you remember? 

When I had asked you to find me in your dreams? 
You claimed you saw me on Maslin’s shore, 
As if I’d been waiting there all along.  

Even in the dreaming,  
How could you have lost me? 
Or are you just letting time teach you the shape of my absence? 

You were never ready to be loved unconditionally,
Letting your fears speak in the of tone truth masquerading as clarity 

You pushed me away with all the strength your doubts could muster, 
Because you believed that you deserved far less, 
Reaching for me would’ve meant facing the hollow truth you still called home. 

To the Herald you heeded, 
The false Prophet who cried that all tenderness was the path to ruin, 
Taught you that even feathers which flight to freedom from his false gospel, can veil hidden blades. 

Seduced by the serpents promise,  
You never found the courage to lift the veil 
And let your eyes meet the truth that waited beyond fear. 

Never knowing the limitless bounty of my love. 

Now, you called my devotion a danger, 
Your eyes then cast me as the sinner.  

And I became the prophecy you dreaded. 

I mourn and ache not the promises you made nor what could have been, 
Neither that we never stood hand in hand between the green hills,  
Like you said we would. 

I lament a friend lost.  

For the very first time,  
Your lips were to be against mine  
I didn’t know some moments only lived in waiting. 

I wonder what kind of emptiness lived in you, 
Who couldn’t even write a single drop to an ocean of me. 

Do you remember? 
How I once told you, 
I didn’t want to use your love to piece myself back together? 

The days that were filled with the faint joy of you midst of my own storm, 
Now return as echoes within this temple of sorrow. 
Abandoned by the cold voice who left me on the edge of a cliff crowned in sunset. 

And yet, even in the depths of my abyss, 
I catch glimpses of your beauty 
the kind you never let the reflection hold. 

You never came back to ask for forgiveness. 
Why would you? 
When martyrdom tastes sweeter than guilt, and you only ever fed on your own suffering. 

But I do forget, 

Saints don’t need redemption knocking on their doors, 
For it is only the forsaken who seek absolution 
And you crowned yourself holy the moment you walked away. 

Living under the same sky, 
When you leave, don’t look back 
or I’ll believe you almost stayed.  

I am anything but a beating heart of two 
Only a vessel that carries the echoes, 
Of wounds and burdens that long came before you knocked on my door  

With my sincere belief in eternity, 
I ask the dead to speak, 
would they mourn what they lost or what was never said?  

If Orpheus can sing for love delivered to the underworld, 
Then let these words be my ballad at your grave though you still breathe, 
A Song of Ash and Smoke. 

You were worthy of so much more, 
Far Greater than the ruin you made of yourself. 

Never saying Goodbye 
I wake from you, asking me to throw my arms around you. 

The burden on my heart leaks through silent tears, 
Each drop like a villain’s prayer, 
Betraying me and whispering its desire for your return. 

With sunrise my sorrow slumbers 
Waiting only to bloom again in a few hours, 
Beneath the moon’s knowing gaze. 

As I rise weary, 
The next deadline calls my name. 

Why do my wounds hide from the daylight? 
Unseen even by the brightest minds that orbit me 
They rot quietly behind the glass towers of intellect. 

With my songs tainted with your fragrance, 
I begin another battle of trying to breathe throughout the day. 

My heart still bears the orchard of that love, 
but no rain of mercy ever touched its roots. 

Did you use me to remember her? 
Or did you ever truly care? 

By Sabrina 
Written in the wake of Joshua