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You are so like him. Your hair is the endless night. The shift of every curl tears galaxies apart and stitches the stars together into their infinite clusters. If I wanted, I could rewrite the very nature of the universe just by running a hand through the tangled ink that drips down your face. Your eyes alone are parallel worlds. If I were to enter the left I would stand in a darkened wood, nothing but oak trees older than time itself, too strong to be cut down, too sturdy to rot; an endless forest that has outlived and will outlive almost all things, except for me. If I were to enter the right I would drown. I am certain even a being of my power would not survive the waves that rise taller than mountains and, having no shore to speak of, seek out anything else they may crash upon; the bright cerulean days and the deep navy nights, it makes no difference to water that is all shades of blue at once. You are unbearable to look at; hideously perfect, you cruel mirror.
You are nothing like him. You touch the earth with your hands and come away unclean, but it does not bother you. You say it is the way of things. You are so fragile; you break so often I can sense drops of your blood in every town you’ve ever slept in and on every path you’ve ever walked, but you do not mind it, you do not miss the pieces of you that you lose. You laugh – I do not understand why – but you say it is good, and with time I know you laugh more in the day and scream less in the night, but you still cry so much and you won’t explain why. There are days I wish you would be silent, but I can not know your mind like I knew his, so it is better that you laugh and scream and cry so that I may understand you. You think yourself so great but kneel so easily to something greater and it is fear that bends your knee. It is a pitiful whimper when you apologise because you think I will not hurt you and you are not prepared when I do. You forget what I am. You want to believe I am something, or someone, else. You think you can help me. You think I want to be helped.
I am so like him. He who you see when I am just out of sight. He who wears the green that hides the guilty from their hunters. He who is named as I am, so you made room in your dreams for him to visit, whereas I have made them my home. He who is in two places at once, in your mind and his cell, and with all my knowledge I know he will remain in one of these for the rest of his days. He whose legs will never stand, lungs will never fill, heart will never beat should you be lost. And when he kills, first with poisoned words, long before his hand touches a sword, no one hears the waver of his voice but himself. He is alone. I am alone. He can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. There is nothing in the world that will change him. There is nothing in the world that will change me. We are lying. We must lie because you exist.
I am nothing like him. He who abandoned you and will pay until he rots, and withers, and dies, and rots again, for more crimes than most humans could name, but primarily the unspoken law of the universe, to forget his love of you. You who are love. And I will love you for all time because you are love and I, I am everything else.