Ash falls from the sky like snow, blanketing me with my lover. It offers no comfort; I am alone.
All that remains of Bloomberg is a blackened trunk. He has been dead for countless centuries. I can see it in his wood. I can feel it in the barrenness of the land around me. He is dead. He is gone.
Still, he calls to me. Tom, come to me. I love you, Tom. Please don’t give up now.
I have given up. My Bloomberg is dead. I can see you, Bloomberg. You are dead... and I was a fool to believe we might be together.
He insists. He urges me. Just come to me, Tom. I know we can be together. Please, come to me.
Where? Where can we be together? There is nothing for me. A rock cannot give up a life that it never had. All I have are dreams and memories of a time long gone and a life I never lived. I think and I feel, but I am not alive. We can never be together. Not even in death.
Tom, come to me. Just believe that we may be together, and we will be. We’re... closer now than we’ve ever been before. I don’t want to lose you now.
ENOUGH! The word reverberates through my thoughts, squelching the tiny voice that has been squeaking falsehoods at me the entire time. I am sick of listening to hollow promises and guarantees of a life that can never and will never be had.
My love is dead. All I have left of him is his corpse to mourn over. I dared to love, and love found a way to destroy everything I had.
My mind is still intact. This is the final irony: I can feel every last iota of pain this causes me. Love found a way.
To say that this has embittered me is laughable; rather, it has exposed me to a full range of emotion that I thought I’d buried in the past. If words could describe it, I would do just that. I can’t, though; this sea of doubt and anger and fear and denial can’t be told in words.
Bloomberg is dead. The sooner I come to terms with this, the better off I will be.
It’s no use, though. I love him.
I love Bloomberg.
He’s dead. Bloomberg is dead.
And I love him.
What is wrong with me? I love a blackened piece of wood that my body presses up against. It’s not even alive.
Then again, neither am I. Bloomberg must have known this. We both had to know that I would be alone in the end. I just... thought we would have had more time together. I never even got to tell him goodbye.
How long have I been listening to only my memories of Bloomberg? How long have I forgotten what his voice truly sounds like? Could I even hear him in the first place? Was I talking to the very tree that I have finally found, only to learn that he has been long dead, possibly before I even dreamed of him?
No, the love we felt for one another is real. The love I still feel for him is real.
Nothing will ever take away what Bloomberg and I shared. I will always remember the tree root that touched me so lovingly. I will always remember feeling my body pressed up against his, even after he had left it. I will always remember the love I felt for him and the love I still feel for him. For better or for worse, I love Bloomberg.
Nothing, not even death, can make me stop loving him.
It is not maddening, not anymore. He is dead. Nothing can bring him back to me. All I have left of him are memories and a corpse. That will have to be enough.
The world has already ended, in a way. Just as life has been snatched away from Bloomberg, so has it been snatched away from everything else. There is nothing here anymore, only an endless blanket of ash covering everything. I alone stand vigil until the apocalypse.
I could not have asked for better company.