To my dead girl,

Are we not bonded together in remembrance

Of when we were one and the same,

Laced with hopelessness and a failed fear of heights?

Are we not joined by flesh in the same foreign body,

And yet we must part ways here because you are dead,

And I am not.

In that vein,

Here is my tribute to my dead girl,

Whom I love.

Dear dead girl,

I remember you less than fondly in quiet spaces and empty thoughts.

I join you in flashes of broken CDs of suicide’s failed grasp stuck on repeat.

I know you the way my hands know the raised flesh of scarred skin,

The intricate lines we used to paint across my body’s canvas.

To my dead girl,

It is not easy to forgive us for the past

Marred with guilt riddled decisions,

The blasphemous actions we danced with

As if an inner heretic would save us from the devil inside

Who intended to burn holes in my psyche.

It is nearly unfathomable to forgive you,

Past self,

For the God forsaken place we used to inhabit,

But alas I must

Because you are dead,

And I am not.

To my dead girl,

Whom I am learning to love,

I am beginning to understand you the way you wished the world around you could.

I am beginning to notice the differences in the shape of your footsteps,

That they no longer match mine the way they used to,

And I know that this is due to our separation

As I move forward,

And you do not.

To my dead girl,

Whom I am attempting to forgive,

I am sorry that you have been dragged across eras,

Broken open for examination,

Cursed into oblivion,

Made to bleed guilt through your pores.

I am sorry for the hurt I have inflicted.

I am sorry.

To my dead girl,

Whom I must set free,

You, at one time,

Were all I could hold on to as the ground vanished beneath me,

As I threatened to freefall into the chasm below

Of a cold, gray, lonely river,

Barely moving over the barriers depression had laid.

For those moments,

When all options were grim,

I thank you because although the choices made were often destructive,

They lead me here today.

To my dead girl,

Whom I love,

I am laying here a small piece of you

So that you may keep the past company,

Rather than haunting the present.

Here lies you

In solemn, silent repose,

Which is where you belong,

Although I am hopeful that one day I may bury you

Among flowers of acceptance.

For now, you must be content to gaze at the stars we must earn.

To my dead girl,

Whom I love,

We must now relinquish the grip of pinky fingers,

Locked in the promise of self-hatred

Ore the houses around us we burnt down,

But that’s just it, isn’t it?

We burned houses when the cold was all that seeped in,

And is that not why

The sun shines across a place

Where new trees grow

Over the ashes of hours spent long ago

In broken hearted weakness.

To my dead girl,

Whom I love,

This is your tribute.

This is your poem.

To my dead girl,

Whom I will learn to give love,

You are not the evil I used to believe I’d unleashed on the world.

To my dead girl,

Whom I one day can love,

We alas must part ways in quiet acceptance

Because you are dead,

And I am not.