It was a word, a feeling, a state of being.

Loveless.

Walk under the beaten weathered sign with that neon-truth emblazoned, let your dirt-crusted boots make scuff marks in the earth, smile with those dew-frozen eyes, offer the radiance in full bloom.

Rinse and repeat.

Hide those shadows under your eyes, the one behind your back, growing longer as time grows shorter, tick away the essence of being.

The shrieks come more often, now.

You know how it will be; the cold lies spreading like ripples from their soft stems growing in make-believe decadence.

Take out that ivory diary, with its tarnished silver leaf; allow the word that you’ve come to caress and covet flash across the cover. Crumple into an abandoned heap between two faded pews; your chestnut locks cascading across the wood with a dolorous sigh.

With that flowing crimson pen, recount the horrors and the nightmares and the light, green and intrinsic, wafting up from that tormenting pool of incubi. Let the salty drops smear the red ink while your pale, shaking finger is cut on the razor-sharp edge of the page.

Then let those mako eyes pull you in; claw at them, grasp and reach and define yourself before they get away. Let that smile flit across your porcelain face, then let your wry pink ribbons turn to ash in his presence. Those startled blue spheres look into you as you let those walls melt and you fall into his warm, heady scent. And you recall that time you said it before; when he made you do this, made you lose your crafted nonchalance. Your sardonic grin, those words that slipped off of your tongue, I’m alone now…Loveless...you whispered, as his eyes widened and he said But I’m…And you didn’t hear the rest; you were too startled that this man was affected by you, by your words, by your feelings, by your state of being.

Not the state of being, now.

Fall into him; this time it isn’t your salt splattering your empty face, nor your emotions swelling and breaking, too large for any room, any expanse. You cry for the first boy to ever cry for you, the first one. And in your heart, or what’s left of the thing, you wonder at the irony of how everyone you touch turns loveless. But you can’t help it; he should’ve heeded the warnings, but you reached for him in your desperation, and melded yourselves into one being through the string of kismet that tied you two up in knots.

The pink fades to gray, and the cold waters lapping at your back drain away any of the warmth on your back that his hands had left. Spots dance across your vision as you once again hold out your hand for that absolution that is always out of your reach.

You thought that you’d found it this time. And, in resignation, you decide to never try for it again. This was the first and the last, the one and the true, and when the blackout intercedes with your rapidly moving thought process, you don’t fight it. You just see the light fade from his lovely mako eyes and you feel one pang of regret, one thing you might just cry about while you wait for him to return to you. But, knowing you, you’ll be going to a different place than him, and he’ll find someone else, he will, he’s such a good, good boy.

Your final thoughts are odd and disconnected; It’s fitting that I go in a lake, isn’t it? Oh, wouldn’t my mother be disappointed; I’ve dropped her gift…Oh, don’t you cry for me. You brought it upon yourself; and now you’ll be loveless, just like me. Like me…

And the light vanishes all at once, and the cold grasp of frigid death encircles your spine, and your final breath is released in a wistful sigh as you wonder why, even in death, life left you loveless.