"Stay"

[Ophi 258]

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"Stay"

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I was holding you when the blade went in.
I felt it shudder through your ribs
before I felt my own hands start to shake.
Your breath hitched, once,
like a horse breaking its leg mid-charge.

 

Blood came fast. Too fast.
It filled the gaps in your armor,
ran hot over my wrists,
slicked the ground where I knelt
begging the earth to give you back.

 

I pressed my hands against the wound
as if flesh listens to prayer.
As if I had ever believed in mercy.
“Stay,” I said,
a word I had never earned the right to use.

 

Your eyes found mine through the noise of war,
through screaming men and clashing steel.
You smiled. Gods forgive me, you smiled,
like you’d known all along
what it would take for me to finally see you.

 

That’s when it split me open.
Not the blood. Not the screams.
The knowing.
The sudden, awful weight of every moment
I chose silence over truth.

 

I loved you.
I loved you in the way I stood too close,
in the way your name steadied my hands,
in the way the world felt wrong
whenever you were not beside me.

 

And I only understood it
as your hand went slack in mine.

 

Your breath rattled, wet and broken.
I kissed your lips, already cooling,
and tasted iron and goodbye.
I whispered everything I should have said
while your body forgot how to answer.

 

When you were gone,
the war kept breathing.
Horns sounded. Orders came.
Men stepped over us like we were already dead.

 

I stood eventually. I always do.
But I left something in the mud that day,
my heart, my god, my better name,
cradled in your bloodied armor,
learning too late how deep love cuts
when it finally draws steel.

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Spoiler

No character wrote this, this was a personal thing i wrote based off of a short story i read 

 

[KeiaTypeBeat 3277]

Spoiler

Very lovely, Alex :3