This must be the end of me.
I am marrow-brittle,
splintering beneath eternity's weight,
a blade that has blunted itself
on too much flesh,
too much silence.
You call me evil,
but I never chose this.
I am chained to the unending dark,
a servant to hollow echoes,
a prisoner to the taking.
Every breath stolen
is another nail hammered into my own being.
I have held infants by their paper-thin wrists,
felt their warmth surrender—
and it scorched me, too.
I have watched mothers weep into dust
until their grief filled my lungs.
I carry despair, yes,
but it has gutted me,
gnawed me hollow.
I am a vulture trapped in a famine,
a god dying in his own temple.
I want to unmake myself.
To shatter like brittle bone,
to bleed out into the void
until even my shadow vanishes.
But what happens when the end ends?
Do you not see?
I am not your enemy,
only the hand that closes the door.
I did not ask to be the nightfall.
I only want to rest,
but I am the last thing that ever sleeps.
This must be freedom's cruelest joke—
that death itself cannot die.
