And I Will Remember You in Madness

For you promised you'd burn with me, but you never did. You stayed in the safety of your shore and saw me fade away. But your promises were like King Stefan who cradled Maleficent to sleep and then cut off her wings as she slept.

They tell me the morning light is kind

but it shreds through my eyelids

like jagged glass shaped into the sound of your name,

a name I mouth in the dark,

a name that gnaws the inside of my throat

like a prayer never meant for heaven.

They press the pills into my palm,

tiny moons orbiting my skin,

mercury beads of manufactured mercy.

Liquid forgetfulness

as if drowning my fevered heart in their chemical oceans

could silence the sound of your voice

saying my name like it was both a weapon and a sanctuary.

The walls here are white,

too white,

unmelting snow stained with the echoes of every name I screamed

when the night peeled itself open like rotten fruit

and I thought maybe you'd come.

Maybe you'd come.

You always promised you would.

Once upon a dream.

I see you there —

God, I don’t know if you’re real,

if I summoned you from the hollow spaces in my chest

or if you crawled out of the places where we used to live,

but your face —

your face is a storm I want to drown in.

You stand at the end of the hallway,

hands in your pockets like you’re waiting for a bus

or an execution

and maybe I am both.

Your hesitation thickens the air,

a storm gathering behind your eyes,

black as a moonless sea,

not frightening, but enveloping,

a velvet dark that wraps itself around me,

pulling me under,

saying you are safe here, you are safe here, you are safe here

even as you step away.

I reach for you.

I always reach for you.

I would have torn the sky open for you.

I would have swallowed every pill in this place

if you asked me to.

But you hesitate.

A breath too long.

A lifetime packed into the space between my name

and your answer.

Don’t let them take me, I whisper

like a curse, like a promise,

like the last thread of a girl

who doesn’t know how to let go.

And you —

God, you don’t move.

You just look at me

like you might stay.

Like you want to.

Like you’re afraid you can’t.

They say love makes you mad.

They say it’s an illness,

that hearts like mine

were made for breaking and burning.

But what do they know about the way your hands felt

against the small of my back

in that dream

where the sky never ended

and you called me yours

like it was the only truth left in this whole unholy world.

I dream of you still.

Fields of bone-white flowers

blooming in my throat

when I try to speak your name.

The rain falling like glass shards.

The air thick with the scent of you

and something burning.

And in those dreams you don’t hesitate.

You run to me,

your breath sharp with grief,

your voice cracking open like the earth

and you say I should have stayed, I should have burned with you.

But morning comes.

It always comes.

And the light is cruel.

And the nurses’ hands are soft but unforgiving.

And the pills scatter like tiny teeth

on the floor beside my bed.

And you —

you vanish.

Or maybe you were never there.

Or maybe you were.

It doesn’t matter.

I’ll remember you anyway.

In madness.

In fever.

In every cracked corner of my mind

where they cannot reach me.

I’ll carry the sound of your voice

pressed between my ribs

like a smuggled weapon.

Honey —

you promised you’d burn with me.

It seems like the flowers in our little attic has wilted away.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek