If when looking at you I tried to label and name all convictions in my heart
I would fail; any such taxonomy would surely be broken
by the inadequacy of words. Yet this I believe is a worthy task, my wife,
lest life pass on and leave me irretrievably in its wake, mired in grief,
and you in some indifferent future with our daughter and our unborn child
alone to comfort you. This must not happen, O Bast; this is my prayer.
Though I was born a fighter, made a soldier, called a hero, my only prayer
is that I be a good man to you. This year has so, so sorely taxed my heart
that I fear I might fail, and become no man, but a weeping child:
scarred, useless, by these travails unmade, bent and broken
like a toy abandoned, collapsed into weariness and deepest grief.
It?s made of me no fine or fit companion for such a one as you, my wife.
But I did not live out this long year in purest solitude, my wife;
and in this year I have heard your voice rise up to Bast in earnest prayer
as you recalled your daughter, or Michael, or me in your winding litany of grief.
And as you added each new-felt pain to the collection kept in your heart
I began to believe that for you it is perhaps much easier to be broken
and when assailed, retreat into the untaxed innocence of a child.
When we wed, ?twas not my intent to keep you bound, only and forever a child;
I meant to save you, to make of you a whole and wholly lovely wife
and not a woman in five parts, whose soul is split and broken.
I searched your past. To dark and necromantic gods I wrought a prayer
that risked my own immortal soul; it changed my life, and sundered my heart
for nothing. You are content to live within your trenchant and articulated grief
and cry abandonment. Mistrusting us, accusing all, you cling to grief
with the stubbornness and prideful passion of a weeping, wounded child.
You light a lamp named Savior, or Dear Husband, and hang it in my glass heart
to see me through its light alone, rather than as a flawed and living man whose wife
is loved and needed to be part of the whole. It is my fierce unsubtle prayer
that you forgive me for wanting you healed, and not simply accepting you as broken.
And not I alone; there are those with whom your ties of friendship are broken
that could be repaired, if only you could be persuaded to set aside your grief
and let your anger go. Apologize. Forgive. Remember joy and raise in prayer
your hopes for us, for this future, for our lives and for this child
who will be born in two months? time. Give ghosts away, and be my wife,
and help me heal, as I cannot, my lorn and shattered heart.
Fionna, please, let not our marriage be broken, not only for the sake of our child
but to put an end to grief. Trust me and step forward, my love, my wife;
these all are the words of the prayer written on the walls of my heart.
I would fail; any such taxonomy would surely be broken
by the inadequacy of words. Yet this I believe is a worthy task, my wife,
lest life pass on and leave me irretrievably in its wake, mired in grief,
and you in some indifferent future with our daughter and our unborn child
alone to comfort you. This must not happen, O Bast; this is my prayer.
Though I was born a fighter, made a soldier, called a hero, my only prayer
is that I be a good man to you. This year has so, so sorely taxed my heart
that I fear I might fail, and become no man, but a weeping child:
scarred, useless, by these travails unmade, bent and broken
like a toy abandoned, collapsed into weariness and deepest grief.
It?s made of me no fine or fit companion for such a one as you, my wife.
But I did not live out this long year in purest solitude, my wife;
and in this year I have heard your voice rise up to Bast in earnest prayer
as you recalled your daughter, or Michael, or me in your winding litany of grief.
And as you added each new-felt pain to the collection kept in your heart
I began to believe that for you it is perhaps much easier to be broken
and when assailed, retreat into the untaxed innocence of a child.
When we wed, ?twas not my intent to keep you bound, only and forever a child;
I meant to save you, to make of you a whole and wholly lovely wife
and not a woman in five parts, whose soul is split and broken.
I searched your past. To dark and necromantic gods I wrought a prayer
that risked my own immortal soul; it changed my life, and sundered my heart
for nothing. You are content to live within your trenchant and articulated grief
and cry abandonment. Mistrusting us, accusing all, you cling to grief
with the stubbornness and prideful passion of a weeping, wounded child.
You light a lamp named Savior, or Dear Husband, and hang it in my glass heart
to see me through its light alone, rather than as a flawed and living man whose wife
is loved and needed to be part of the whole. It is my fierce unsubtle prayer
that you forgive me for wanting you healed, and not simply accepting you as broken.
And not I alone; there are those with whom your ties of friendship are broken
that could be repaired, if only you could be persuaded to set aside your grief
and let your anger go. Apologize. Forgive. Remember joy and raise in prayer
your hopes for us, for this future, for our lives and for this child
who will be born in two months? time. Give ghosts away, and be my wife,
and help me heal, as I cannot, my lorn and shattered heart.
Fionna, please, let not our marriage be broken, not only for the sake of our child
but to put an end to grief. Trust me and step forward, my love, my wife;
these all are the words of the prayer written on the walls of my heart.