Pressing out on the edges of the doorway
As they lean in on me
Weightless, I wait
Heavy, I hang
The moon drips down my face, smeary and viscous
Silence rings off the walls of the Vashnars
The chasms of the Tareas
A shadow picks at my spine, whispering:
The Sundered Ones are returning
To fit their torn flesh into the holes they left behind
They cradle the mothers, they caress the old men
At their touch, the blood slows, slips down to form
A two-foot bruise on a dead child's back.
And I watch, trembling--
"Take what you will."
The moonlight slurs and slumbers, glutinous on my skin
It is a conductor of the weight I have forgotten how to feel.
The weight of a thousand loving eyes
"Look away, please look away!"
They are offering succor, they are offering forgiveness
I cannot know them again.
"Go away, go away."
My back bends under the burden of knowing their names.
I turn to my servants, Shadows and Time--
"Dispell these revenants.
Let them pass away into the distance
Let me join the Sundered Ones.
Let the sun's indiscreet eye
Rise on this bloody morning
And look down on the suicide of a genocide
And the victims of her surrender.

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Haernos, in the year 84 MA.