He Spoke Love




I did not quite realize when I left him behind. But then he was always the languorous one, slow and sentient. He is never one of those noticeable types and that is probably why I don’t concede to him, or myself the fact of what he means to me. It seems so naïve and sissy to let him know that. But, that opportunist, he melts into tarmac, spreading himself too inconspicuously thin whenever I might need him.
I was going to prove today different. Going to prove I could be complete without him. That I did not need any more of his gifts. More than anything I needed to prove to myself that I did not need him to tell me, show me, make me aware of the subtle gratifications around me. That I could feel like I wanted nothing more, wanted to be nowhere else, without him.

The opposing flows, in one of the city’s busiest precincts left a void that seemed interesting. As a grudging admissal of his omnipotence I agreed to let myself think on his purported lines. “Beauty is contrast.” He had said. So the macabre could be beautiful I concluded.
The spectacle the void held and which everyone else seemed to be ignoring was in utter contrast to the rest of its surroundings. It very well satisfied my callow standards of connoisseurship and my insatiable buds of taste. Something about the retard shrouded in delinquency mocking a hungry dog with a dead sparrow, eyes still open, held me for a moment and then I held made myself hold me with a grin, of scorn. And when that realization did set in, I grew fearful and despondent.
I went back all the way, but he was long gone.

Requiem for a schizophrenic

He is my shield against the world, which I conjure when he’s not around. He would always take the coldness, which I could feel now, on him.
Fleeting along the hilly roads my sleep was broken to a voice I thought I was familiar with. But with the tone I was not. It sounded tired, cynical and mistrusting. She Who had once been my goddess, given to a cruel turn of time and worse: having given up. Some thing rose up within me as tears floated down her cheeks, now withered and lineated. The sparrow’s eyelids refused to flutter, no matter how hard I tried. If I could just have had his hands to close its eyes and not see my own face reflected in them. I waited but he didn’t come. The cold fog glossed its eyes.
I would never let him go this time.

A setting for eternity

“Why do you pick me, tired but restless traveler?” asked the flower of four white petals of me.
“To keep you in my book so that I may remember you all those years later.”
“When you shall look at me all those years after I shall not remind you of myself but of this journey that you are on for I shall seem out of place. I shall remind you of the other traveler who looked just like you and went this way a time not long ago.”
“Describe him better.”
“Of body, I need not for he looked just like you. Of mind, I cannot, save tell you what he said when I danced the Sun’s beams off my petals into his eyes:
“Tempting flower, I shall drink you in here and now but I shall not take you with me for you belong here in the street of hundred flowers. I shall remember you but without the hope of holding you forever. You are momentary as is this feeling that you give me and I am glad for that and not sad for the rest of the moments that you could not be with me.”
I don’t think you should or could have me”.
With that the four petals dropped one by one and left in my hands a virginal stump whose pollen irritated my nose when I sniffed them. I felt close to him. The sun rose higher and the tears on Her cheeks glistened as dew, the sparrows lids fluttered. I felt closer to him and it felt nice.

I could see his silhouette against the Sun now. All what separated us was the frozen layer on what turned in summers into a waterfall. Skeptically, I watched a few sheep walk across the steep slope. How naïve and foolish, they are! I could not help wondering. They probably don’t even realize they would be dead if they slipped on that ice. Then it was my turn. I stepped on that ice but it seemed harsh and hard just because I had expected something softer. It did not offer me even the hint of a grip; of course it owed me nothing. Tremulous with my feet curling up within my shoes, I thought I should turn back. Then he turned to his side, saw the sheep below, turned his eyes towards me and then back on the sheep.
Sometimes in life you need to be naïve and foolish. You need to trust blindly. You need to do things and not analyze them. My feet opened up and I walked across in a few confident, insouciant steps. We trekked on, me behind him and content.

Some people call him my naïveté, I don’t think it accurate. But then no one word can be. You may call him whatever you wish to but I’d still never let him go.