A Haiku for His Soul

Haiku:

In time forgotten

Life wanes, darkness hath no pain

Silence learns his name

It’s been two years since your self-decided death, and I’m starting to forget.

I’m starting to forget how much your choice hurt and how angry I’ve been.

I’m starting to forget the colour of your eyes and the way you always clapped your hands when you laughed.

In time, your memory will be less painful, and my heart will no longer hold all this anger... perhaps only a bit of sadness in a long-forgotten place that drifts to the top of my memory on quiet, rainy days.

Today, I am not quite there yet. Today there is still a conflict in me that I’m too ashamed to voice out loud.

There is a part of me that feels yours was a life ultimately wasted - a waste of all that was before, and all that could have been after.

Another part of me understands the demons you were fighting were just too strong; that at some point, you went from flirting with the demon to being its slave.

I wonder if you knew that this demon would introduce you to its demon friends — or that this legion of demons would be more than what a soul could carry alone.

For you were alone.

By choice.

Because no matter how many people said or proved their love for you, the demons always seemed to whisper the same siren song:

“Lies. No one loves you. Only we love you. Only we make you lovable.”

You clung to that siren song like you were Atlas holding up the world.

I think, towards the end, you realized the demons lied — but you were too stubborn and proud to admit it, and to ask others to help shine their light into your darkness.

Your demons were Acrisius of Argos — stuffing you in a chest and casting you into a sea of despair, cursing you for being alive.

You could have let those around you be your Dictys, let them rescue you from that sea.

You could have, just as Perseus who came from that chest, slain the monsters.

There are a lot of ways I wished the story could have ended — but life is not a story.

Life is a choice:

choose to slay your demons, or be slain by them.

To overcome, or be overcome.

I cannot say “your fight is now over,” because you did not fight.

The demons drew you a bath and filled it with your own self-hatred and self-pity.

You climbed in willingly and put your own head underwater.

You did not fight.

You did not want to.

Whether you believe there is life after life or not, you will now never have to fight those demons.

For you have no more thoughts about demons or chaos.

You do not have to face the consequences or look into the eyes of the heartbroken.

Such a selfish victim of your own created circumstances you chose to be.

You wanted the world to see you so badly - to see your worth and treasure the heart and mind that you so parried with.

Yet in time, your name will fade from the mouths and thoughts of the people who knew you.

That last desperate wish for recognition will soon be denied.

Your memory, just as your body, will be no more.

All that you will be is silence.

O Atropos, spare my thread so that I may never live this fate.

For this is too sad a fate to carry into death.