In my heart I can feel this thing tugging at me.

Memories, thoughts, and feelings became one.

Thoughts of pain,

What I’ve endured as the years progressed on,

The wrongs I’ve done to deserve it,

Only realizing it after the moment  had long passed,

Still I repeat it,

Each time believing that it either won’t happen or just simply not caring for the consequences.

Every time I have been wrong.

Whenever I cause hurt there's a greater hurt waiting for me

And it is saddening that I never try to end the cycle.

Knowing that in doing so it will stop the pain.

Yet the mentality that I have been cursed with prevents that.

Believing that there is a certain amount of wrong and regret one must carry in order to redeem himself.

Seeing as if the path of redemption is not for those willing to change but those with the greater sins.

And when the day can where I sat on my high horse esteemed and self-absorb,

Gazing at my own image, the reflection talked back to me.

Not with words but with the look in the eyes.

Hell’s fire, melting the massive barrier I have put around myself.

Showing me my true state of being, images from my past.

As this continues I am taken back to my origin story.

It hits me with the force of a thousand waves.

I look in the mirror and now see that I am broken,

Mangled and torn, limbs dangling freely in these cold winds.

The image of man vanished like mist in the heat,

Replaced by misery incarnated.

Misery reminds me where my tragic journey begins.

Influencing me to write this.

My dear Raven,

To you, I dedicate this.

You were my first step into the mounds of trouble and heartbreak of this crooked world.

You sprung the string to my life like the fates,

Twilling it to your will,

Making my time with you appear endless.

All so that you could prolong the agony you put me through.

And with you was the beginning of my lessons in pleasure, pain, and desire.

The logic of self-preservation.

It all started with you, but Lord knows it was never going to end there.

From turning bliss to torment in a heartbeat.

Summoning the appearance of an inferno,

And I stargazed into retinal torture for you.

But I know our full story,

So I will not sit here and play innocent.

You were perfection before I transformed.

I bought your behavior upon myself,

Someone deserving better than me.

Better than a coward afraid of what the world may think of him,

Afraid that I may have actually found love and my days of lust and fornication are over

Before I had the chance to do the wrongs that I so desperately wanted to commit.

Not because I get a rush from these sins, but because I feel that I may not be accepted into society if I am not as tainted as the rest.

Those thoughts which have you laying here as the victim of my faulted mind and selfishness.

And all I can think is that if only I could be a different man.

Maybe we could’ve rewritten this end,

Go back to where it all began,

But I know we can't.

All that is left is for me to dream and pray.

Hoping that I could rewind or erase your mind,

Making you blind to the worst you have seen in me,

My last card.

Knowing that would be the only way we could live again,

Content like life was meant to be.

Though I know that it is impossible.

And in drafting my final letter to you has only confirmed it.

It has shown me two disheartening things,

We unshackled the monsters that emerge in our mirrors.

What's worse is that we wanted them unchained long ago.

My one and only Raven, this is our tragic tale.

Our destruction.

All because we illusioned ourselves to believe

Three damning words.

If we were to protect and care for each other

Lift one another up, have unconditional affection,

Make sacrifices, always have the others best interest and support,

Reverse all the wrong that we had done,

I love you could possibly have meaning once again.

We both that will never happen in our current form,

So goodbye my Raven,

May we meet again in another life, changed,

Ready to love the right way.

Until then, I wish you peace and happiness,

And all the joy I was unable to give.