{"sf1_id":1696231,"sf2_id":"3eg9GMnY","title":"Mistolin, Compassionate to the Bereaved, Hear Me","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":696,"posted_at":"2021-03-16T17:29:00.000Z","tags":["Gay","M/M","Poetry","Sad"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1696231-mistolin-compassionate-to-the-bereaved-hear-me","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/3eg9GMnY","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/d9/6e/d96e8a98-411c-4b2b-8dcb-6c256fddf51b","description":"#3 of poetry\n\nThis is what I'm talking about when I say I don't seem to be able to write about love without being depressing.","content":"He came to me when sunset filled the room.\n\nHe smelled of sweat and sweet grass, as he does.\n\nHis face was like the dark side of the clouds.\n\nHis fangs were blooded. Dirt clung on his claws.\n\nHis bruises purpled underneath his mane.\n\nHis eyes were sad, and bishop-serious.\n\nAnd I was almost incoherent tired\n\nWith weariness, with wound, with wayfaring--\n\nThough never mind that he was twice as tired--\n\nSo that it took more than a few deep breaths\n\nBefore I understood what he had asked.\n\n  \n\n\"I would not ask this of you for myself,\"  \nHis eyes were sad and bishop-serious,\n\nWhen have I seen them any other way?\n\n\"But I could feel you hurting, down the hall.  \nBut I have hurt as you are hurting now.  \nBut I have grieved as you are grieving now,\n\nAnd when I hurt, and when I grieved, I was\n\nAlone.\" The sunset soaking through the air\n\nWas turning it to amber. I was caught.\n\n\"If you would grieve alone, so be it. Yet\n\nYou need not grieve alone. I could not love\n\nHim half so much as you did. No one could.\n\nBut I loved him enough, in my own way,\n\nTo know the depths you wander even now.\n\nIf I can offer any kind of light\n\nTo lift the load of misery you bear\n\nLet it be this: You need not be alone\n\nWith grieving.\" Not another word he said,\n\nOr if he did, I did not care to hear.\n\n  \n\nHe held me as the sun went down. He held\n\nMe as I wept away the night's grim hours.\n\nHe held me wrapped in nothing but the dark.\n\nHe held me as I slept, and when I woke--\n\nThe clock was lost somewhere past two fifteen,  \nThe moon was in the window, and his face\n\nWas pearly hued, like light pollution snow\n\nUnder the silent streetlight ranks--he held\n\nMe still. What nights, I thought, had he once had?\n\nWhat sorrow had he wrestled till the dawn\n\nThat taught him: this is what a grief feels like,\n\nThat showed him: this is how a hurt will feel,\n\nThat scarred him: with this you must somehow live.  \nWhat tragedy had turned his eyes so sad\n\nAnd bishop-serious? And he had been\n\nAlone.\n\n  \n\nI did not ask. To this day, I know not.\n\nHe does not know I woke to find his arms\n\nLike ward and windbreak over fallow field\n\nAround me still. Come morning, he had gone.\n\nOur work remained, of course, it always does.  \nOur foes remain, in worlds not yet outfought.\n\nOur oaths and omens, in worlds yet unfound.  \nLong months passed, when I could not dare to ask\n\nAnd risk bearing the pain of older wounds\n\nWhen all my life a new wound was become.\n\nYet even this new wound begins to shrink.\n\nIt covers up my life no longer. It\n\nBegins to dull. I dare say it grows old:\n\nBecoming old wounds is what new wounds do.\n\nIt is not painless yet, I doubt it will\n\nEver be painless. But soon comes the day\n\nWhen I will stand at his door, with the sun\n\nSetting beside me. I will meet his eyes.\n\nMine own will be as sad, as serious.\n\nAnd I will tell him, 'Now I understand.\n\nI cannot love you as I once loved him.'\n\n(Who could I love again as I loved him?  \nAs well to say that someone else was him.)\n\n'But I can thank you, if you will allow.\n\nI do not ask this of you for myself,\n\nBut I know how the shape of grieving feels.\n\nThat I survived the learning is because\n\nThe night I learned it, I was not alone.'\n\n  \n\nWhat then will happen? That's for him to say.\n\nThis is no fairy tale, where happily\n\nIs ever after, if it comes at all.\n\nIt may be I will never hear his tale.\n\nIt may be he will never read this verse.\n\nIf so, it will not matter. In his arms--\n\nFor howsoever many nights he needs--\n\nWill you find me. And if his grief is there,\n\nAt least he will not lie with it alone.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695995-cold-front.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1696908-and-i-shall-rest.json"}}