Chapter Text
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die...Do not stand at my grave and weep - Mary Elizabeth Frye
She's here. Bright as sunshine, her smile makes her eyes scrunch, and he remembers how she hates it. She never does it in photos because she says it makes her look older. He knows it’s her real smile. The one he loves the most, so dearly, still now. Still he could draw it by memory, had he the talent for drawing. She’s wearing the ski jacket they brought for a winter trip, he can’t recall the year nor the place. She made his life a blur of joyous moments. It’s like the song, if he had a magic bottle, he would have stolen all the minutes and the seconds to keep them close to his heart.
She twirls in the snow, swirls, happy, blissfully unaware that he’s sure it’s the last time he’ll see her. Or maybe, she knows, because she’s the happiest he has ever seen her since she became an unreachable dream he no longer tries to reach. He made peace with it. Not much with the bitter feeling of having celebrated a birthday she never reached. In the arms of someone he loves as tenderly.
She’s talking, but it’s not registering. He wants to hear her, her voice like a remedy to all that hails him. But his mind is plagued by a much lower voice, heavier with a harsher accent.
Someone bright as sunshine, too, a smile eating up his whole face, neither looks older crinkled by the traces of happiness, they just look beautiful.
“Don’t forget me.”
He couldn’t, even if he wanted, all his will couldn’t make him forget the way her fingers feels in his hands, how her laugh sounds like all the candies in the world his father forbad him to eat, how she applies her lipstick, ever so delicate like tainted glass.
She’s not bitter nor pleading, she’s not condemning him, reproaching him. She’s still smiling an it feels like finally being able to cry in the privacy of her arms. He wants to take her face in his hands and fuse them together, be one as they were when they made love, he wants to bury himself in herself, lie in her grave, in all eternity.
But he wants to lie in someone else’s bed more, he wants to make love to someone else more, he wants his heart to beat in unison to someone else’s heart. He is of the living and she isn’t.
“Don’t let me haunt you, don’t let my image set you back.”
He knows. He’s walking forward, finally. It’s not easy, it never will be, grief is the price to pay for love. The stronger the love, the harsher the grief. He was more dead than she was, then, those cold five years. But there’s someone else’s hands in his, walking at his pace, gently nudging him.
“I wanted to give you wings, not to be your burden.”
There is so much love in him, oozing like blood, pouring out of his heart, it’s a river that sometimes tries to break his ribs if he wants to keep it from escaping, keep it from growing. He can’t reign upon it, he’s got too much love, he was made to love, he was made to love and he doesn’t regret the grief that comes, inevitably.
He wants to die before Charles, so to spare his lover’s soul from a pain he knows all too well.
“Let me go, Max.”
He cries, he begs, he kneels in front of her. His altar, his solace, his Polaris.
“You have to let go of your guilt Max, you have to free me.
I know you will always love me, and I want you to love him as freely as you loved me. I want you to let yourself be happy and loved.
Let me go, Max.”
He opens his eyes to the dark en-suite. It rings in his ears for a solid hour, his ribcage hurting so bad it feels like she’s trying to physically escape, and his heart will follow.
But he’s got a heart big enough for two. Hasn’t he?
He sinks back in the bed, eyes wide still. The body at his side stirs, he shushes him back to sleep. He’s alive. They are alive. So he lets her go, her, the guilt, the idea that he can’t love two people, the ghost and the living, that he should make penance for her death all his life. As if she would have asked him to do so. She wouldn’t. She had an even bigger heart than his. He holds on to the love, that he can keep, the memories and the sound of her voice, the light playing in her hair, the gentleness. He holds it tight, thanks silently whomever inhabits the sky for giving him the love of his life twice.
Tomorrow, he marries the other love of his life.
He won’t talk about her in the past tense, maybe he will in a far future, not yet. He will never talk about his love for her in the past tense, for he will never cease loving her. He cohabits with his love for her, like the warmth of a candle, a tender reminiscence of what was, and his love for Charles, like a soft blanket, his shelter, his comforting place.