________

Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.

-The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

________

What Death Told Me

Mikaela Staire

________

One last time.

A whisper like a thief in the night. A selective voice. My ears ring in harmony with his tone. He is
here. Green eyes like the sea stare back at me and from above.
I can feel his palms, his hands, and his fingers on my face. His breath fans against my eyes. He
has no smell. I cant smell him and it bothers me greatly. He had a particular scent but I never knew how
to explain it until now; now that Im robbed of it. It was him. Just him. Just Peter.
I hear him in the air. In the billowing of the trees outside my window and the rustling of their
leaves. I feel him in the breath of my unborn children. Memories of slowly entangling palms; emerald
eyes dilating; mouths barely opening. I inhale. I exhale. Breath of life.
My state of mind has completely turned against my better judgement. Is he here? Is he with me? I
reach out in the darkness, and in the comfort of my own bed, I am left with the unsettling feeling that a
ghost is in my room.
There he is. My fingers brush against a body his. I know it by heart. The carved jawbone, the
lips that kissed me every morning and every night. He is here. He is here. I close my eyes and I relax in
his grasp.
While still holding his face in my feeble hands, I lament to him. Come back to me.
He wipes the salty tears from my cheeks. His hands are familiar. One last time, he says to me.

I shake my head. I blink the blurriness from my eyes. I can see him clearly now. Hes sitting
beside me, his hands reaching for mine.
Youre not I whimper. Youre not here.
He suddenly looks very sad. The alarming shade of green in his irises begin to dull and he sighs.
One last time, he mumbles, looking down at our hands.
No I weep. No, no. Please.
My natural reaction is to hug him. I wrap my arms around his torso and I sob into his chest. I feel
no heart thumping. No heat radiating off him. He is no longer warm. He is just here. Just for now. I clench
onto him tighter and he is whispering smooth nothings into my ear.
When I close my eyes I see his limp corpse on the pavement. It lies there in the rain, his head
bleeding and his eyes still open, shock paralyzing his dead body forever. Red and blue lights filter in my
eyelids. The sound of the heavy rain that made him this way haunts my vision.
I go limp in his grasp. I have nothing more to say.
He begins to kiss me. It feels like Ive been kissed by him for the very first time even though I
know it is the last. I clench his arms with my fists, refusing to let him go. My knuckles turn white.
No, please I gasp, when he tears us apart. No, God, please dont.

The convulsive sobs that break from my lips are not as strong as the power of it all; Death visited
me tonight. I was limp in his victims arms. I wanted him to stay, and I begged him not to go. But as the
night faded from my eyes, and the moon began to dance away, I was left with nothing but emptiness.
In the morning, it begins to rain.