Dear You,
I have been hiding in my solitude and silence these many months past; slipping away into the oblivion within. For all my love of words, too often they have failed to give expression to the feeling raging through my heart…
I guess now is one of those times.
There’s music playing mournfully in the background here; but still this silence soaks my soul like the last wave of the turning tide reaching for and succeeding in its yearning for dry land. The silence roaring through these hollow cavities, my own private sea-caves, soothes me yet leaves me unsettled. At the end of the day, with caves overflowing, what is the use in silence? I wish now for poetic words and iridescent phrases to illuminate the dark spaces within. Only, there is nothing. Silence and stillness and a total absence of light to guide me.
I have made my decisions, these past two years, with a clear head but full heart. I have regrets at my choices and no regrets for loving, just this ineffable sadness lurking throughout my rooms of memory. To turn back time and savour those moments with you more deeply is an impossibility. Not because I do not have the means to time travel, for I do. Memory is a blessing I bear – one I often curse because it remembers all too clearly what I have lost. I can walk the corridors of the past with ease, each second with you is fresh and vivid; alive with sight and sound and scent. The impossibility lies in the fact that it is physically, emotionally and mentally beyond me to cherish those moments any more than I did at the time of their creation. They were experienced with more intensity than this frail heart and body should ever have been asked to bear as it was.
The pain lies now in the lack of sensation; the total numbness of my hands and mouth and body when I recall how you held me and kissed me and made love with me. I can’t feel that. Without your touch these memories are just home videos thrown up on the vein-cracked wall of my mind. How is it that a person can still taste another’s mouth and yet be unable to bring to mind the feeling of those lips pressed to hers? How is it that I can still recall with exactness the scent of your skin, with or without cologne, and yet not feel the pressure of that burning body hard up against my own? I truly believe that, were I an artist, I could sculpt your entire form out of clay; every contour of muscle, the hard and the soft of you, to perfection. My hands recall your body with an etched brilliance that Michelangelo would have sold his soul to achieve. Every night my hands run over your body; remembering, reminiscing, yet aching with emptiness.
My hands are empty now and I am no artist to recreate what God intended as a one-off only.
I can see you in my mind, blushing over these feeble words and it makes me smile in a sad sort of way. You will be sitting there reading these sentences and feeling a little fear that I may well be obsessed; but also flattered and smug. Does this assuage your need for hero-worship? Only, if you recall correctly, how tough it was to fight with you that last night and you told me it would never be the same. Was it enough? I knew we were reaching an ending of sorts and I wanted my feelings for you clearly understood. Again, words failed. My silence at that time (and the necessity of silence plainly obvious) was the only expression of emotion left available to me.
Pen now and ink. These are all that are left to me. Again. As usual. Were you here now… what? I no longer know. My head is no longer clear and my heart has overflowed. It is dripping flames of agony and desire and longing throughout and over my body.
I hurt…
what more can I say?
Silence and stillness.
Won’t you come play with me?
Swim in the clear, dark waters we caused to be?
Illuminate this black space,
filled with all the fallen stars I’ve wished upon?
Were you here now…? I’m not sure. Candles? Darkness? Which would better suit? Should I hide still in this solitude? Should I keep myself from reaching beyond my body’s confines to touch yours? Should I be ashamed of these feelings and the actions they require of me to be fulfilled? Possibly I have no shame left. Not after those moments with you. Why should I feel shame for loving someone? I tried to – a couple of times – because society says I am wrong to do what I have done. My mind, my heart, my soul – they disagree. My life, lived the way it has been, would have had me do no less. Only more, were that an option.
It is not. Silence and stillness. For all that lack of light I could still see you clearly. Could you see my face that night? I hope so. I was smiling and laughing softly at your beauty. Silence without stillness. I miss you.
Are you fearing obsession again? Don’t. I’m not. I’ve been obsessed before and this isn’t it. I know it well. I lived with it for eight years. It is a dark and heavy feeling, deep with brooding and self-taught lies. My mind is free of that and clear enough to know the truth. Back then I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and my own brainwashing. I can now. Maybe it’s because I can differentiate between the two that I am so sad. Reality is a harsh and cold place to live at times
I guess now is one of those times.
Why can’t I feel you in my memory? I know the body was designed to forget the sensation of physical pain; was it fair of God to deny us the remembrance of physical pleasure also? Maybe it is a blessing that I do not have that to mourn over; to highlight even more forcibly what I no longer have. I don’t know. All I know is that I miss having you here to light up this darkness, roar through this silence and bring joy into this solitude.
Thank you for the memories… but won’t you please come out to play?
It’s okay.
I know you won’t..
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