Hero

[Nullia]

I can't keep this up.

There's no other way to say it.

As the days went by me, I thought of you less and less. I thought it was finally over.
I thought I could take his hand, and make good on that proposal I made.
That I was ready. To move on to a new chapter.
I thought I was ready.

I thought I was ready.

There are no chapters in this book.
My memory of you is a cancer that keeps spreading.
I just got better at ignoring it.
But it's so easy,
so very, very easy,
to relapse in an instant.

I'm ready, I told him.
To confront this fear inside of me, of what is inside of me.
To make myself whole, for my sins and for my virtues.
I'm ready, I told her.
I wanted to get that help she keeps saying I need.
To figure out what was wrong with me. To find out how I can fix it.
I'm ready, I told him.
I wanted to move on. To get married. Have a family.
To be a real person for the first time since she touched my hand ten years ago.



Everybody wants to be a hero.

Everybody wants to die for someone else.

Everybody wants to take that easy way out, and get a statue, and know people cried for them.

Everybody wants to die.





It's a disease.




And I'm sick of pretending it's not.








Everyone gets left behind. We keep marching forward like the path behind us isn't covered in corpses.
Every three steps, another person falls.
From the exhaustion, from the blood. The little toy soldiers break at the joints,
and die.
I feel it. My strings snapping. My joints breaking.
My bones shattering into a thousand pieces. My blood pooling on the floor.

I'm going to go insane.

At some point, I stopped hearing the footsteps. When I lifted my head, I realized.
Everyone else had already fallen.

It was just me.

I've left them all behind. Dragging corpses by strings. Their ropes are bound to my wrists, and cutting deep.

In memory of those we've lost, I join the chorus of thoughtless prayers. As I stare at your statue in the graveyard.

At your head on the pike, as they cry joy at your martyrdom.

At your derelict house in Arcadia, when you left me without saying goodbye just like everyone else.

At your tome in my drawer.
At your book in my nightstand.
At your armor he still has.

At your grave in the dirt.

I hate this city.
I want to go to sleep.
I want to go to sleep, for a long time.
I'm tired.




But I can't.





Until my legs break, I will walk. Until my fingers break, I will crawl. Until there's nothing left, I will writhe forward in the dirt.
At some point, it stopped being what I was born to do, and started being what I have to.


I can't keep this up.

But I don't have a choice.

I never did.