Nothing (A24)

A24. The stones speak a history only you can hear.

You were never nothing. Even when I hated you, I knew that.

I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you a lot of things. One of which being that I’m not really sure I hated you at all. I could say it, here, but you probably can’t hear it, and part of me feels that never having closure is just one small penance I can pay for how everything ended.

You don’t have a tombstone. Why would you? You were a legend of a criminal that the world wants to pretend doesn’t exist. They want to make it as if you never were as if that could erase the atrocities they tried to pin on your shoulders. I thought you guilty as well, at first. I said such terrible things to you. I feel terrible now, I really do.

Not that it’s any use to you.

Since I couldn’t get you a tombstone, I built you this one. It is more art than anything else. I spent months learning how to stack the large stones of this rock face, and making them beautiful enough that the locals have declared them sacred and wont knock them down. They don’t know the history behind them, or that in this small way they honor you in a way they never would have before. They’d knock them down if they knew, which is why I’ll carry this secret to my own grave.

I hope you are in a better place, wherever you are. I hope the after has brought you peace. You always had faith in the after, I’ve heard. I hope beyond hope that you are right. I’m starting to doubt it. Faith doesn’t seem like enough, in these times. Knowing what I now know, I can’t think of benevolent god who would allow this to happen.