CW: Terminal Illness, Religious Imagery

Let me drop to my knees.

Let me drop to my knees, the hard tiles, and kiss the corners from your face. The jut of your cheek and crease of your mouth. That wrinkle in your eye. Let me press my lips to it and taste the salt-damp of tears, the hollow that curves to your nose. You say you do not look like yourself and maybe it’s true, but in this line I see what I have known from the first, this scar as familiar as the callus of my palm, and the sky-blue of your iris is just as it has always been, a little heavy now.

You look as much yourself as ever.

(Believe me.)

Let my knees buckle. Let me crumble, committed to dust. Let me trace a fingertip over the lump in your throat, and press my face into your feather-soft hair. You will not run your fingers through it now but let me do it for you, fix it into place and keep that lock from falling loose. You cannot stand touch on your bony arms, your frail hands, but the lightest pressure of lips on your face is enough, would be enough. Just to feel you, to have you, to be here. And when you whimper low, I will swallow it, taste the iron and salt of your mouth, the traces trapped in the creases of your tongue. Swallow it and promise you that I am here, that you do not have to be alone.

Oh but we were grand once. Grand in a way that leaves an image behind the eye, the silhouette of you in that heavy coat, the tilt of your head. Grandness now in these pieces that are left, and I will give them to you. Leave them an impression in your skin where my touch has been and let you keep them. Keep them as a thing sacred, that you will have them like relics. Secular and holy, these whispered secrets sins they say, but all the more for it.

And if you let me I will be the one to stay. Be the one to be here and breathe so that you feel it, that you know. Not alone in the darkness. Not alone with all this strangeness, all this wrong. These vague promises and threats of what they will do. To help you, they say, though you do not want their help, do not want—

Want just to be let be. To be let be, a gentle touch, a quiet word. And I will be that. I will be it, as you have been for me. I will be and let you rest, weary now. I will keep you safe.

Let me.