Hermit Soul

Your fingers strive to pierce me with nails long brittle/cracked/gone; strive to scratch and dig and gouge my skin to save your own. I begin the incantation: if you love someone, you must let them go. Under the calm surf, your chemo-thinned hair lashes like an anemone in a violent sea, whipped by your fading struggles. Your blunted fingers do little more than bruise despite the strength of your death-fear. My love, my life-fear, hold me onto you even though your off arm catches me in a wild hook. I must finish the mantra/the spell/the incantation, though you do get your head above water for a moment. How like your life, your death.

You manage a gasp of not-water before I push you back, and I repeat: If you love someone, you must let them go. I tell myself this, one layer of consciousness flitting about with its own fears hither and yon. I tell myself this as your cancer-ridden lungs strain to turn that one gasp into fuel for the body that is protecting the consciousness that is the window for your soul. I love you. I must let you go.

The soul can live in only one house of flesh; but it can for a moment rest in any; or it can go on to the infinite. That much is known, or known well enough, anyway, in the collective consciousness, the collective myth. We talked about it; I felt out your mind while you reclined in discomfort, unable to find rest in any form after a round with your doctors.

Religion is the last gasp of the dying. Is there a taste of it in your lungs, now? Our love may never die, but I can't bear to lose the you inside your shell. I sought religion for the both of us. If you love someone, you must let them go. Jesus knew that; he preached it. His own Father let him go, for love.

The gauze I’ve wrapped around your mouth is infused with holy water, blessings of the priests of a half-dozen religions, the ground-up dust once housed in an ancient canopic jar. Your last gasp pulls in this spirit-food; salt water binds it with your alveoli—those tarred and swollen sacs. It resonates in your lungs, grows into a muted glow pushing yellow through your mouth, my hand. It untethers your soul from the only flesh it's known for these forty-some-odd years.

And with your soul loose—I return your hook with prejudice. The tire iron breaks your skull with a splash and a dull wet thump; I press my lips on yours and SUCK; the soul fades flickers FLARES and fills my reservoir. Soul. Life. Stuff. Dizziness and pain and I feel you—

feel you—

fighting. Only one can survive in this body, and I am weak, you have always been the strong one—

weak—

drowning—

drowning in you/of you/with you. I drop the iron/you/myself and cough the water out, water into water into life—I can't lose you—I can't—

But I can feel you. You're coming around. Don't worry. Don't struggle. You're strong. I'll find you another home, just like we planned.

#fin#