Death and True Love

It was a lonely night, the sky was clear and the air smelled of the ocean. The waves crashed gracefully upon the soft sanded shore as a shadow walked across the beach without a single thought to act upon. The high, towering cliffs loomed over the sea as a mother does when watching her sleeping babe. The figure did not miss a step as the sand gave way to the footprints. Stopping, the shadow stooped and grasped a stone in the cold palm of death, and with a simple flick of the wrist, sent the stone flying out over the waves and into the distance, further than the natural eye could see. The figure pulled back its hood and stepped into the sharp, crisp water; sea foam building at the ankles. Like Christ in Rio de Janeiro, the figure spread out its arms as if accepting an unknown embrace from a stranger and without hesitation, stepped further into the clean depths of the ocean.

I let the water swirl around my robes, tasting the sulfur and regret coating my non-existent flesh. Soon, I can no longer touch my feet to the bottom of the sea, and am swept into the unforeseen darkness under the waves. I'm going home, back to the flames that never seem to welcome me whenever I return. It does not make a difference to me, it will be there that she is waiting for me, the only one to look past what I must do to continue my existence. I have never been able to understand if she loves me...love, a foreign concept to me. There has never been a reason to unbury the unneeded feelings from so long ago, none at all. But I gave in to a weakness that I did not know I had until I laid my hollow eyes on her frail body in her pearl coffin, pink satin seeming to take the color that once danced upon her gentle face. I should have never let my boney fingers graze her cheek, that was all it took for me to uncover that which had been lost. Or so I had thought. Does she love me? Or does she somehow wish I had left her to go past the golden gates into Paradise? I cannot understand if it is tolerance or, perhaps, love that gifts such a beauty to look past my skeletal figure, the hooded robe I wear for her so that she would not have to see a hideous beast. I never cared what those who could see saw of me, or what I do. But for her, I do care, I never want her to look at me with disgust and wish to leave me. I would do anything to keep her by my lonely side for eternity. Even if it meant never collecting another soul in my long and never ending sentence. She is love, and she is all I need to continue on with myself. But I can never stop asking myself, does Death deserve to love another? Let alone be loved by someone as innocent as a maiden rose? I may never find the answers I seek, but I have all of forever to find the right and wrong to what there is. Alone