Chapter 17
Beneath the Surface, Still Breathing
Time is running out.
The sands slip through my fingers,
Each grain a moment I should have had with you.
You are the last wish I whispered to the world,
The last prayer I wept into the night.
And for a moment, I had you.
I always believed in the next world.
I always hoped there would be something beyond this,
Somewhere I could love you forever,
Somewhere where bodies do not break,
Where the ocean does not take,
Where time does not steal what is sacred.
Your touch is the remedy of death.
This is the power you carry,
To chase away the shadows,
To drag me back from the edge,
To anchor me to life when I am drifting toward the dark.
But the end is near now.
I feel it creeping into my bones,
Settling in the spaces where warmth once lived.
The weight of it presses against my lungs,
The hush of it lingers in my breath.
Life is slipping through me, slow and silent.
And when the last moment comes,
When the light in me flickers,
I will reach for our picture.
I will hold it like a lifeline,
Like a prayer pressed between shaking hands.
My last breath—
My death—
My dirt—
My burial—
My farewell to this world—
They will all be written in the blood and tears
Of our burning love.
My life was your joy.
My heart was your touch.
My happiness was the light in your eyes.
And your love, even for the short time I held it,
Was the greatest privilege of my life.
Everything of me, everything in me,
It belongs to you.
I am eternally yours,
In this life and the next.
And now, the ocean is calling me home.
Its voice hums at the edges of my mind,
A siren’s song whispering of peace, of surrender.
The waves rise like open arms,
The tide beckons me into its depths.
It tempts me with visions of you—
Of us, of love, of being whole again.
And in the breaking waves,
I still hear your laughter.
I still see your eyes in the glow of the rising moon.
So I reach.
Further and further into the abyss,
Chasing the love that was lost to the tide.
Chasing you.
Chasing us.
Chasing forever.