Chapter Text
Every time he’s back at the start, it hits him like a powerful wind
And all of a sudden it's at the tips of his toes and his fingers
And under his skin and in his lungs
It’s her face across the tavern
Threadbare jacket gripped to her chest
Slender hands shaking from the cold
They meet for the first time for the thousandth time
For the millionth time even
And he falls in love
Just like that
Just like breathing
On one dark morning, at the beginning of it all and the end of it all
Just before the breach of dawn
She told him she would haunt him,
Her birdsong breaking through his grief addled sleep
She couldn’t help but to haunt him, she said.
I’m sorry, she said
”Please,” he whimpered against the thin pillow
Squeezing it like he wanted to be squeezing her
”Haunt me.”
Later that morning he got out of bed, washed, and crossed the threshold into sun
The lyre gentle in his hands
The people watching
He doesn’t feel it, any of it, doesn’t feel himself living
A haunted man knows only his ghost
To anyone’s eye he’s out in the world
Playing songs for coins and bread
Songs without words
But everything inside him is with her
Turning in circles with her
Holding her and kissing her and losing her
Again and again and again
I want to keep you in a jar with holes on top
Keep you like a lightning bug
She murmurs to him across a pillow
They’ve finished their lovin’ and stare at each other atop the low pallet
Flickering candlelight painting their faces
And he wants to keep her too
Only he knows that he cant
Because it’s not the first time she’s said it
She says it every time and every time they don’t get to keep each other
It makes him feel warm to hear it all the same
Every go around he tries to change the cruelty of her fate
Stop himself turning, stop her falling
Stop his heart splintering into pieces
He pushes against his own body until it nearly snaps in half trying to stop it
But he can’t change how he adores her
Can’t erase making a home with her
He loves her just the same each turn
He loves her just the same always
Should he be surprised when it all ends the same too?