In the end, we are all just people. But in the beginning, we are dreams, longing to be fulfilled; in between, we struggle to be on course. Pain is the sound of gray clouds looming, of uncertainty spoiling the first rays of the sun. It is the lingering scent of regret that suffuses the stubborn will, with iron hands cold to the face, fixing mine eyes to see that I have dangled by the bus of romance—where once I was valiantly welcomed, seated, sated, filled with warmth—hands ghostly white from holding on, long enough now to understand, long enough to overcome myself and see your dream’s worth, which I left dangling for so long, and which I hope to redeem as I dangle now.
From the sidelines, I may have already been scraping off the scars of my demise, but from where the violent breeze inhales momentarily, I could see my being flailing about, groping for a railing of hope, for eyes that look kindly, biased by history and so foregoes the unattached popular objectivity, for the gently mouthed words, of faith still alive, of assured welcome should I make it back in time.
Uncertainty is the tattered clothes ravaged by my utter desire for focus, left hanging on my weighted shoulders by the complicity of time, which long ago I embraced unwittingly with my complacency, old ugly aged like uneaten bread. Only now it’s a quite different kind, as if it has revealed its face, heretofore covered by the shining radiant hair of our proximity, thereby turning its common pang into an unknown and malevolent tumor. How I long to be naked again, or be else renewed by the passage of time, to be able to dream without the interminable fear of being scoffed at creeping in my stomach. But as with everything else, longing is not enough. This I accept without the least grudge, for it comes inextricably packed with the penance long overdue on my part. On the contrary, these I will befriend, like forgotten prophets whose sermons I have afforded nothing but deaf ears. I may yet find contentment in their arms—the spouses uncertainty and pain—a shelter from the instinct to regret anew the distance of the stars. I will hum loneliness in tune with my step, back straight, head bowed yet eyes transfixed on that elusive destiny. Pride is the sole I will wear out in going there, if it hasn’t been eaten up by my innumerable misgivings. In any case, I will trudge the distance if I should wear out the soles of my feet, and bleed the rest of the way. If life should be extremely kind and I find you at the end of the struggle, as if all along you’ve been jogging the chasms of an oval disappointment, ever checking if I’ve done my share of the bargain, then my dried blood caked on the streets of my battleground will have turned into monumental petals, victorious as the flowers you’ve grown in my world by simply walking it.
But all that can’t be farther now. The honesty of the hand that grips my heart to the brink of suffocation, the acrid smell of my singed knees scraping the pavement, the merry pins and needles pitching tents in the hand that won’t let go of hope, and the renewed bellow of the laughing inhuman storm—these are mine now. They are my own. I bear them all in the hope that they are nomads in this desert I’ve concocted. I sever them from your back so you may enjoy the breeze that lies in wait for your vigor, your truth, your smile.
Happiness is still a decision. My voice may fade from your ears, I may be nothing more than a vacuum yawning, but the truthfulness of my words, the scattered conversations that look misplaced in this strange surroundings, remain unadulterated. It is not that love is not enough; only that sometimes people are shown to be unworthy of carrying out its designs.
You are my dream. You are my suspended reality. You are my postponed destiny.
