Page 171 of The Truths We Burn

“But what about—”

“Even if it means we are caught for what we did. We won’t let them get away with it. I promise you.” He tells me, and his eyes burn with the only truth I’ll ever need.

I trusted him. No matter what, I trusted him.

“When we die, can we be buried together?” I ask.

A look of shock washes over his features. “You plan on dying sometime soon?”

I laugh. “No, but when we do eventually die, can we be buried together with our hands like this?” I raise our conjoined palms up in the air.

“As much as I’d love to cop a feel in a coffin, I’m being cremated, Theatre Geek.”

Of course he wants to go out in a blaze of fire.

I wouldn’t have him any other way though.

“Well, I want us to be mixed together, then. How I’m taken care of after I die doesn’t matter, I just, I don’t want to be alone.” I look at him, catching the embers in his eyes with my heart.“My biggest regret is knowing Rosie died alone. We came into the world together and left it separately. I don’t want to be alone.”

He brings our hands to his mouth, pressing a searing kiss to the top of my fingers.

“You will never be alone again. Never. Our ashes will be combined,” He pulls me close with the leverage of his grip, and I can smell his smokey scent on my tongue.“So that no matter where we rise from them, we will do it together. Fate might not have chosen me to bear your soul mark, but I will make sure it knows that in this life and all the ones after, I will always be yours. I always have been.”

Somewhere, I can hear Shakespeare crying that we’d defied his odds. We are the star-crossed lovers who were doomed from the start, and here we stand.

Hand in hand.

All the dead poets who wrote of sweet, gentle love cry out in disgust at our sick, twisted version of the emotion.

But it’s us.

And we are the eternal flame.

Forever.

Thatcher

My father writes me letters.

Articulate, well-structured accounts of what his days are like. How they drag by and what he spends his free time doing. Sometimes, it feels like he’s merely on a superficial vacation on a stranded island.

That’s how regular the conversation is.

If someone else were to pick them up and follow his cursive writing to the very last line, they would never suspect he was locked inside of a concrete box biding his time on death row.

That’s how normal he is. How normal he has always been.

When will society learn that the monsters of the world are not ones with yellow teeth and sharp claws? How many documentaries must we watch until we see the truth, see us for what we really are?

We are the leaders of the free world. Your neighbor who hosts summer BBQs, husbands with families, politicians, doctors.

We don’t live underneath your bed or in your closet—that’s too easy. It’s not complex enough for us.

No, we stand in the daylight of your homes, out in the open. Examining your lives, learning every single day how to chameleon ourselves into what you deem a “good person.” The kind of person you trust, the person you let inside your home for coffee, the person you least expect to ruthlessly murder you on your bedroom floor.

The longer it takes for humanity to comprehend these things, the more of an advantage we have over them.

The earth gives beneath the weight of my walk. Mud tints the sides of my Dior derby shoes, and I am already planning on throwing these away as soon as I can get them off my feet.