The despair is winning

When my mother first saw a picture of him,
she gasped in wonder at his beauty.
She sighed perplexedly,
"How can a man have such grace,
looking just like an elf or a fairy?"
she asked of me.

For a brief second, my face displayed
both pride and amazement,
as to me the answer was obvious:
"He is my twin soul, isn't it natural
for him to have such grace?"

I was sixteen back then.

For nine long years our friendship
carried us both through weal and woe.
We were twin souls, equipped with supernatural kinship
as if we really were elves or fairies, closer than real twins,
without any blood connection, yet our hearts' bonds
so deep that we never failed to understand each other.

We would have conversations without saying a word,
never failing to understand each other regardless of distance.
It was as if we were connected telepathically.
No, that would be understating it, in fact.

It was more so that we shared a soul.
If God created us, surely he created us
by taking one abnormally large soul
and dividing it in two, placing us in different wombs
a large distance apart both in space and time.

I feel this is the most likely of all truths,
because when he died two weeks ago,
even before hearing of his passing
I felt that the world had become less beautiful.
I felt a pain in my heart and when I turned my eyes inward
the only thing I could see where my inner world once flourished
was now a desolate wasteland - a void stretching across infinity.

For the past five years I have been surrounded by death.
I live my life in silence, having little I find worth speaking of,
and fewer that would even listen.

And now, maybe the only pillar I had left to help me stay standing
finally collapsed, leaving me all alone in a world that is indifferent.

My heart is empty - my rib cage is a crater - my inner world a wasteland.
My soul has been torn in half and forever left me,
my grief so strong that I struggle to find a reason to keep on breathing.

All I have is silence - a silence so deafening that I am forgetting how to speak.
To some degree, I don't even want to remember how to communicate.
It doesn't matter anyway - there isn't anyone left to speak with.

I want to care about life but I don't. I wish I could desire passion,
but not only has my passions died, I am too far gone in the nihilist abyss
to even care that I am decaying.

My adult life has been nothing but a sequence
of sickness, trauma, grief, loss, death and despair.
For a long time I've struggled against this darkness,
hoping to one day reach the other shore and see a new dawn again.

But now it feels meaningless.
The despair is winning.
My grief has begun to define me,
I am so lost without you,
my beautiful twin soul,
my lovely fairy.

The despair is winning.

8 januari 1986 - 5 september 2019
sleep well, my twin soul