Work Text:
You said you cannot sleep without listening to another’s breathing. That you would lay awake in the darkness, your mind racing with thoughts that would plague you when you could not rest.
But now I am the one unable to sleep without hearing you beside me. And when I do—in brief snatches—my dreams are full of sadness. I reach for you in the middle of the night, only to find your side of the bed cold and empty. I have to remind myself that you’re gone, to someplace I cannot follow, much as I’ve tried. In my dreams I can convince myself you are still softly breathing beside me, but all I have when I open my eyes is a cold bed and tear-soaked pillows.
With the heavens as my cup and my words as wine—
Your voice haunts my waking hours, your face my dreams. There is little solace in visiting your shrine, because your ghost doesn’t haunt a place you rarely visited in life. It was here you gave my father’s sword back to me, here you finally laid to rest your faithful companions. But you loved life more than death and you were never drawn to places like that.
I wish that you return victorious from your conquest, and can rest without fear of cold nights.
I lowered you into the coffin myself, arranging your arms and clothing as though you were sleeping. I would not allow the others to touch you. For is not the husband the only one to touch his wife on their wedding night? The layers hid the ugly cut across your throat but I could yet see it, bloody and raw.
Even now I can still feel the chill of snow, that aching chasm between us that I could not cross no matter how far I dragged myself. Still I fell short.
I am caught somewhere between the past and the present and the hours I spend at your side are so very little compared to the life I had wished to spend with you. The flute you once gifted me sits so innocently in its stand. It is all I have left of you and my fingers clench to breaking point around the cool jade.
I wish that you both are able to arrive at the same destination even by different means. I wish that you both will stay together till a ripe old age.
The laugh is ugly and sharp but I do not even try to repress the grief, not for the sake of my guards, nor for anyone else hearing me. They already witnessed my sad attempts at ending my own life, the near-feral way I tried to stay by your side. I know what they say of me in the city. The stories that say I held your body for three days, that I had asked to be buried within the same coffin as you, that I had given our three bows with your breathless shell at my side.
None of these are true, but I could not bear to have my last sight of you be in anything other than red.
The closest I can get is placing my name on the memorial tablet alongside yours. After all, am I not dead as well? It is bad luck, the servants say, but I’ve been plagued with bad luck since I was a child. You were the only good thing to happen to me in my life and even you were taken away.
Your breath brushes my cheek like a caress, the phantom impression of your hand upon my arm. How I miss your laugh, your nonsensical songs. You had a beautiful voice for singing, despite what you always said.
Your hand moves from my arm to my cheek and I press my eyes shut, afraid of seeing empty air where there should be your gentle face.
I wish you a happy and healthy life, free from worries and stress.
I do not let myself cry. Perhaps I am no longer able to. But the need is still there, the urge to weep and bury my face in your robes.
Long ago you told me you were placed in this body, that you came from elsewhere. Perhaps you will be given that chance again. And I pray that it is within my lifetime, that we may find each other again. And if it is the gods’ will that we do not, I hope that we will not be chasing each other through many lifetimes, trying to narrow that snow-chilled distance. For when I catch up to you, I will never let you go again.
My fingers blindly reach for the wine I brought, pouring generously into a cup that waits beside me.
And with my head bowed and my cup lifted up, I offer you three toasts in return.