Monoliths

I build monoliths on an old empty plane. While I work on these sculptures, my eyes reflect a grey sky covered in clouds. Over time my surroundings have changed, I seem to remember a time in which the heavens would whisper sweet nothings into my ear. Id be awoken by Aither, and my day would begin.

But the gods have now abandoned me.

Despite these circumstances, despite the winds crashing into me, the lightning damaging my work, the darkness clouding my eyes, I continued to work. I continued to build my beloved monoliths.

Until I met you.

I do not know when it was, but I noticed you. You were like me. I didn’t realise it until it was shown to me by your work, but my own had slowed down.

I have always been fascinated by eyes. Their colour, their story, what have they seen? What are they seeing right now? What will they see in the future? Questions I will never have the answer to. The only eyes we will ever understand are our own, but even that is stripped from some.

Eyes. Your eyes. How could I ever forget your clear blue eyes. Colours that can only remind me of the times where the heavens shined, when the gods would whisper my name, when the gods saw faith in me.

I still remember the first time I was able to fully swim in your eyes. The day we began building our monoliths together. The day it all changed. We erected more and more, they were better, more stable, they held more meaning. On the days you were not around, I would ensure the monoliths were protected. I would not let the gods take this from us. I would not let them hurt you. For you, my dear, I would destroy the pantheon entirely.

Time passes, and you show me the monoliths you have built alone. You ensured that they were maintained, that they were new, that they lasted. I show you the monoliths we built together. The ones… That we built together.

Rust, scraps, rats, remnants of my own. Inside of my towers I placed a picture. A memory. That is all that is left. But they have been set alight. they are fading. I watch you cry. But you are not crying for me. You cry with the intent for me to come back, to forget my own work that had been abandoned by the gods, That had been abandoned by me, and join you in building another monolith together. But where is my own?

Your monoliths stand tall. Taller than the ones we build together. Than the piles of rubble that I had worked on alone. Yours stand tall. Yet you beg me to abandon my own and focus on the ones we must build together. The ones that the gods accept.

This is not how it is supposed to be.

You know what is to come, so I must bid farewell. I tell you to fear the gods, resent them, because they are false.

I stand over my rubble. They rebar pierces my feet. The flames of burning memories encase me in a ball of hatred. The gods are not the ones who brought me the nostalgia of the old times, it was me. I alone created these monoliths. And I alone destroyed them. These flames serve me as memories, all here, but never complete. Ever changing, as all things are.

They are not our gods.

Our gods do not exist.

And with a pen between my fingers, my blood will form sonnets that you will never read. I shall write down the incomplete memories that once was. And I shall curse you, until the flames take all that there was, and all that there will be.

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