Thursday, October 12, 2006

...

It's been a year now and I'm still wondering if they did it deliberately.

It is easier to exonerate him. Neither he nor I knew or understood - neither us nor you and I. We were merely two years of assuaging my desperation to be loved. And my hunger to be the Saviour... I was unable to make my own faith true.

But her? Wasn't she my soul sister? Didn't she understand me best? Value me most? I wonder now if she was laughing at me... all those times I confided in her. When I gave her things that didn't belong to her?

In the remnants of cigarette smoke and relationships, was there mocking talk of my naiveté? Or perhaps, my stupidity? Were the two of them, lying in each other's arms, laughing? I know that all the others were. Even the ones I didn't know. For all that time, that's what they did.

How can this be trust?

So much I didn’t say. Not a word about the humiliating incisiveness from outsiders who had no right. Or even a breath about the silent, insidious calling cards of deceit and guilt? Instead, I sewed all my questions into a diaphanous dress that made me ugly.

For tears unnumbered, I created new apologies everyday for feeling... thinking... believing... begging to be wrong. I should have asked the questions... if only to be the the bigger person. Then perhaps, I would not have been left in the dark. Regret is a wick I secreted into a paper latern to light the way out.

These were pictures I'd composed. One of a lover, a husband, a father. The other a friend, a sister, an aunt. The first was a truth made illusion by insensate confirmation. The second was a lie given shape by the weakness of my own hands. I can now only be grateful that I did not release the shutter then.

Once, I left you on a mountain, under a fathoming grief. I tied you in a handkerchief to be opened today. Today, the grief and the handkerchief have both crumbled to ash. And yet, I stand here naked, negotiating with a fractured present to bury a bit of a broken past.

Instead, in the killing fields of my own dreams, I bury myself.

8 comments:

Parth said...

The pain is hearfelt and the prose elevates the feelings to something tangible, yet ephemeral. Very very well written.

Anonymous said...

I'd say that you're taking your stance now. That still counts for something.

Anonymous said...

After all the love is lost, what remains is honour and dignity. I assure you, you have enough of that. Love is secondary.

./w

Anonymous said...

there is eloquence in silence my love. am disappointed (albeit not with the prose)...

Anonymous said...

You are given directives from strangers who are really friends. Be careful. Protect your strange and beautiful underlife. Protect yourself from the boundless nimbus -
what a mother fears a child will find once the oval of her arms is witheld.
A wish for you, love, to move against
the abstract, ever present danger
that calls all things to an end
like a letter, or a poem.

Extempore said...

@Parth: Thank you... very much. :-)

@Vi: And sweet, sweet thanks that it does. Welcome aboard!

@./w: Thank you, my dear. *hug*

@B: I've been silent all these years
- expression is a good thing, my dear. Am glad you liked it... somewhat! :)

@Ish: Sweetness, I haven't really understood what you mean. Pls to explain, no? :)

Anonymous said...

Hermit hoar, in solemn cell
Wearing out life's evening gray,
Strike thy bosom, sage, and tell
What is bliss, and which the way.

Thus I spoke, and speaking sigh'd,
Scarce repress'd the starting tear,
When the hoary sage replied,
'Come, my lad, and drink some beer.'

/samuel johnson "Sage Advice"/

Brown Weed said...

uff.. too much! full of heart.
you should write at fiction more often.