When I was betrothed
to Death;
or rather,
promised, devoted, fated,
chosen and consecrated
to be led to Hades;
crowned for the cold embrace,
by the king of the underworld’s—and my own—prayers,
my king, who gifts the dead with Death’s
last grace.

He came to me one night,
and not a whisper gasped in wonder,
doubt dissolved like dream’s own thunder,
all was summoned, called, awaited,
longed for, yearned for, sought and fated.

I never wished to let him go.

Drawn, devout, from life’s frail thread,
by law and vow, by guilt and dread,
where glances burn through halls of stone,
where silent hearts still weep alone,
for trials fierce, through oaths unatoned,
this funeral hymn of ideals unknown
of morals twisted, untrivially torn,
a chalice raised—sacrality bemoaned,
to love beyond the reach of time dethroned:
to be as Nergal- Ereshkigal, woe

I never wished to let him go.
I wished to follow as he left.

I was given
the answer
to life’s cruel riddle,
to God’s own grief,
to endless exile, cursed belief,
to linger, stay, dissolve, remain,
the lost,
forever locked,
inside the bane.

Into my outstretched hand,
he placed the keys, the hidden truth,
beyond the brands, beyond the noose,
beyond the gazes cast in shame,
beyond the light, beyond the blame,
past fallen souls who bear the weight
of sin that binds their blood to fate.

And had I held the key in my hand as I died
he’d take where he was

I never wished to let him go:
for the strongest will,
of all willed things,
I nursed to be
as near as Ein-Sof to the Void,
as
Isis to Osiris,
as Dis Pater—Prosperina,
Yes, spellbound,
yes, as Hades
Orcus,
Plouton,
to our goddess lost, Kore,
as winter’s withered Persephone.

"I want to marry you,"
slipped through lips in trembling prayer,
from endless thought,
from spectral air,
for longing had become my creed,
my lust, my void,
my love, my need—
a single flame of blackest fire,
where angels loved,
and Being ne'er transpire...

If silence spoke in fleeting glances,
then the void would shape its name,
in words unsaid yet carved between us,
eye to eye inside our storm.

He—
Azrael and XUL-Dúman,
gave me back the solemn vow,
that he, who holds both life and death—
our reaper—
would find the key within my hand,
and I saw, with love unending,
all before me, all eternal.

"I am Death, and I have come to take you."