I remember the way he laughed. I remember how it was a rarity that he genuinely laughed from something I said and I craved it.

I remember he spoke with such charm that it put people at ease, and when he was in pain it withered clouds into wisps and froze even the sands of time.

A man who I believed with all my heart to be the pinnacle of authority, a dictator, my God. For his presence seemed to tumble boulders like pebbles to a river, and shake the most immovable of people.

And he held out his hand to me, me who knelt on the ground, with my eyes turned to the ground despairing.

I will never forget it. I will whisper it with my dying breath, an image painted into the fading blacks of my eyes the blue of his locks and the white of his wings, oh so softly tethering me to my sanity.

With those tethers, those shackles of ice, I reached down and took his hand and we fell.

I have seen the words of many, who claim they would shake the heavens for those they love. I claim no different.

For when I watched him shake the heavens, I too followed. With ambrosia on my lips and poison on my tongue, I kissed him.

And when his eyes, those soft charming eyes, matched mine behind the rosy tinted glass window, I stood unsmiling. He stood unsmiling. And it was the two of us, together and separated, on the elevator to Hell.