Sacrifice

I've got a sacrifice in my pocket.  

Just a little one. I swear it doesn't matter to anyone.   

Not even myself, to be honest. Though... I suppose then, I can't call this my sacrifice, even if it's the one I'm offering tonight.    

A life gone wrong, a life taken before it's time... Call it an omen of things to come. In its death is meaning, for even terrible things can have purpose. Even if that purpose is merely to serve as a reminder... So call this a remembrance.   

A sacrifice for the sake of remembrance. A life to signify the lack of such... Though no one will see it that way. No one will see the loss, only the gain that it signifies in their world. No one will think beyond its beauty.   

That's the beauty of this sacrifice. In its death, its beauty fades quicker... It can become something simply pretty, but it will lose the vibrancy it held in life... And that loss is more painful than any gain made.    

My steps sound hollow here in these halls, but I don't really hear them... The emptiness that echoes within is drowned out by what is echoing outside. Death. Slow, but continuous, eating one life at a time in a world that cannot replace them as quickly as they vanish.   

But no one seems to care. The few voices that do speak up are too quickly lost in the soft riot of loss and earthly mourning.   

This death held a point, but no one tonight will realize that, not until Death has already stepped up to their door and has already started the motion to knock and come within.   

These halls are emptier than they realize as they sit within the callous room at its end. They can't feel what goes on in the outside world. And the shame is that they never will, for their way is not to explore and understand, but to make the rules that govern the outside.   

They control that which they feel nothing for, and as such, they cannot be expected to comprehend what they do.   

But they will. And that too, has its own beauty. For even tragedies are held as treasures in this realm.   

I raise a hand to knock, then think better and simply enter, silent as a phantom.   

It takes a moment for them to notice the intrusion and stop their mindless conversations and pointless bickering. When all eyes have fallen upon me, I hold up the sacrifice and lay it on the table before them.   

It doesn't take long for the confusion to fill their faces like poisoned water, tainted with distaste and distrust. This is their disease, to preside over that which they view with contempt from their cozy chairs and lacquered desks.  

I say not a word, for there are no words left to spill upon their ears. They have already made their choice of deafness and dumbness. They have picked their tomb and resting ground.   

And I have merely left a flower upon their gravesite, a suitable sacrifice for the lives they've thrown away.   

It is the last of its kind. And it is dying even as it lies there, taking with it the last hopes of its beauty ever being restored.