mausoleum
When visiting the grave of love, one must pay the proper respects.
There are a myriad of ways this can be accomplished. You are familiar with many: screaming, crying, cursing. Convincing yourself they were a horrible person from the start; convincing yourself you were a horrible person from the start; convincing yourself the stars were not in your favor.
Some are less well known: giving up your personhood. You can’t exist without them. Not recognizing who you are away from them. Staring at the mirror and questioning if you even existed before that first touch. Peeling away the skin of who they made you in hopes that there’s something more. That there was ever something more. Lay it on the grave. It’s the perfect bouquet.
When standing over the grave of love, one must understand that one’s body lies within it. That beneath the soil are two perfect corpses, forever preserved in a cast of betrayal and longing. There you lie in stasis, even as you stand above it; you will be there forever, even as more graves are dug. You will be six feet under, time and time again, as long as the hummingbird in your chest seeks the nectar that sustains it. You cannot change this. Don’t try.
When reading the headstone at the grave of love, be sure to search each word frantically. Be certain to read too deeply into each one–was this one the final nail in the coffin? Or was it this one? If you hadn’t said that, then, maybe… maybe. Trace the engravings with a finger. Feel the terror of the final month within it. Know that you were being eaten. Know that the monstrous thing beneath the dirt is better enclosed there. Know you never would have survived it. Neither of you would have.
For as much as you were the meal, you were the carnivore as well. Love makes one ferocious; love makes one greedy; love takes, and you can only hope you have enough to give. You bit back. You allowed yourself to be consumed. You accuse them of preying upon you, but who made them a predator?
Sit on the grass and wonder if they ever visit it, this mausoleum of your time together. Understand that you will never see them again, even as it feels like they watch you from around every corner. You will never escape their eyes. But they will never escape yours, either. Know that they do visit, know that they scorn your corpse the same way you mock theirs. So is the nature of this kind of death. You will never love them again, but what you had will lay here, perpetually. Is that not enough?
Dear reader, you were not ready. You never could have been. Dear reader, carry these instructions in your satchel. This is far from the last time you’ll mourn. You’ll walk through this graveyard again and again, watching as your one resident turns into many. That first headstone will degrade, and become faded with time. The words will be nearly illegible. But when you trace them, trace them just as you did in the beginning, and you will feel their teeth once more. Know this, and let it happen. So another hole is dug.
--mausoleum, jay cl4ssics, 2022
