There is a story to be told, and the story is this: I died for love.

Death came to me, cloaked in moon-shadows, and he sang to me. I raised my voice to his, and we created music together, and it was pure and seraphic and fit more for a vaulting cathedral than a backstage dressing room. It was then that something shifted within me, in the region of my ribcage, small but tremendous all the same.

Death spoke my name, and I was born again, or maybe I woke finally from a long dream, or maybe I had been blind and my sight, restored; it did not matter. He spoke the word as a spell, and in the cadence of his voice I found my emancipation.

Death stood before me and I beheld him, and how strange it was that I had not before considered his corporality. I say strange, because had I not seen him come to my father's bedside, and my mother's before? Then, he had been little more than a spectre - less, really, an inchoate gust of shadow that could not be looked on directly. Now he appeared, and where I expected legs there were legs, and where I expected a chest there was a chest, and arms and a head, and surrounding him, a writhing tumult of living darkness. His eyes burned with the fires of Hades and his face, inscrutable.

Death held out his hand for me to take, and he touched me and guided me closer, and swept me into his cloak of midnight. We descended into the catacombs, and further down still.

There is something more to the story, and it is this: I left someone behind.

He came after me, brave man; when he came, I was sure the pure sunlight in his veins would scour the shadows and burn Death in his own home. Fine clothes torn, face bloodied, golden hair tumbling awry, and I wept and I wept and felt my sorrow in my bones, for I had left him behind for a creature of the night.

He came after me, a hero's journey, a quest, and I was the Holy Grail, because he sought me out with a fierce ardor and I was never to be had. He dug a hole in the earth and fell through to the Underworld, and he braved the ire of its guardian, omnipotent and wrathful. Brave man; he loved me. Foolish man; he loved me.

He came after me, and finally I revealed myself and pleaded for him to go. My heart broke apart into sand-small pieces watching his eyes dim and shutter and his fear and anger take over, knowing it was I who had wrought this.

He came after me, and he made a deal with Death and tried to take me with him. But he looked back.

I did not lie: I died for love.

I died for the love of a man who was not a man, and for the love of music and moonlight. The path before me was clear, and it led to freedom and the stars. I kissed my love for him into his lips and he wept, and we held each other and were one.