Do every single thing I will tell you. Hush. I want you to consume me.

Wait.

Begin with this: I want you to slowly rip me apart, scrape my skin until the innermost layers of my being are exposed. Now remove the mass, the solid beating organs that permit my very living. Untangle every fiber that constrict me.Smash my bones, puncture my lungs, annihilate my guts down to my entrails and dig out my ribcage until you find that sole thing that beats at the very core. Don’t you lay a finger on it. Listen. See that? Leave it be.

Now that you have destroyed everything else, spare me this singular remain. I wanted you to incapacitate me for you to see how I will survive this. Leave now, go far away to untold lengths. Be haunted by how this heart you left resounds even in your sleep. 

Everybody’s leaving. Not my everybody but others’ everybody. What is this concept of goodbye, of leaving and why does it hurt? We’re in pain because it’s not the fitting end we thought it would be, it aches because there’s guilt. We fear because there’s uncertainty of return, an obscurity in assurance of what will remain. We weep because it’s a momentary release of what we hope will bring back what left us. Goodbye. Not my goodbye but others’ goodbye. Maybe in another parallel reality we’ll meet and maybe somewhere in between, a tiny fragment of remembrance will somehow connect us and remind you of what you left behind.