They've assembled on the stone courtyard,

brandishing lamps and staves and shouting for justice.

​

They think they'll find me. Ha!

The pathetic fools! Ha ha!

​

I'll never be found!

Not in the sepulcher of their greatest citizen,

God rest his charitable soul.

​

Only the most heinous would violate the resting place of a saint.

Only a madman would think to bring his prize with him inside,

to hide among the grubs and judgmental shadows of the past.

​

But I have been branded villain,

so is it not appropriate?

​

I have been labeled mad,

so is it not apt,

​

for a man to hide away with the slumbering object of his affection,

the only thing he wanted to claim as his own in a world more unforgiving than the hearts of his pursuers?

​

She is mine, I tell you,

mine, and mine alone!

​

Even if we must wait here in the gloom of countless lifetimes,

reaffirming our unflinching love with an embrace only lovers would know,

I will do what's necessary to ensure they never separate our fated souls.

​

Thus is the devotion of a man moved by love's uncompromising will.

​

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