i/i

i. now is not the end. brush off your ghosts and meet his.

ii. don't allow him to sleep in. strip the bed until it's as naked as his soul and remind him that he's going to have forever to sleep anyway.

iii. expose your scars, show him the sadness stenciled into the backs of your hands. tell him depression is your territory and dying is his.

iv. invade the world together. breathe him in and he'll have to breathe you out.

v. choose the sweat after a run, the long conversations, the telephone calls, the poems, the love letters scrawled on napkins.

vi. do not be surprised. you know how this will end. 

vii. work for him, sweat. stumble in his shoes for a while.

viii. in the side of his hospital bed, instead of slow-dang in his arms, listen to his pulse beat through bandaged wrists.

ix. avoid clocks, sandcastles, glass sculptures; things that will remind you of time passing by.

x. get drunk.

xi. waltz on the hospital's rooftop. don't say a word. don't shed a tear. pretend you don't notice life leaving his veins.

xii. let him cry. let him fall, then give him one hundred and fifty reasons why they're too beautiful for tears.

xiii. tell him you love him, every fucking chance you can get. you'll never know which one is going to be the last.