They did it. They took our Reaper. Our flower-crowned banshee of blood and bloom. Our sunbeam-slasher, our tulip-turned-tornado.
Gone.
Because of him. Because of the so-called White Knight. Because Ronin stabbed her with a flower. A flower. A pointy little petal-poker right to the heart, and now she’s—
She’s—
I don’t even know what she is. She used to hum when she breathed. Now she sighs like someone who owns a windowsill herb garden and means it. She says please.
She says thank you. She crossed a street at a designated crossing point.
She drinks tea now. With lemon. I don’t even know who lemon is but he sounds like a narc.
She walks without static. She smiles without fangs. Her hands used to bleed poetry; now they just... fold laundry.
They have declawed the dahlia and called it peace. They have ruined her.
She is soft. She is light. She is delicate like a moth’s last dream on a warm windshield.
So I am begging you. Do not blow on her. Do not pluck her eyelashes from her cheeks and make your selfish, hopeful, wishful little wishes. She might float away. She might turn into a chalk drawing of a girl who used to matter. She might—gods—say sorry unironically.
I can’t. I’m unwell. I need... something crunchy.
I’m going to lie down in a puddle of myself. But you? You should mourn her. Grieve her like the glowing god-kissed goth gremlin she once was. Write poetry. Scream into jars. Set a baguette on fire and let it burn all the way down.
She was ours. And now she’s not. And that is the most monstrous thing I’ve ever seen.
And I have seen all of you naked.
I’ll be back later. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll drift into the static, dreaming of her smile before it learned restraint.
