Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Letter to Yesterday -written in spring, 2014


It was early.  So early.  We were new lovers and the world was right.  I awakened early, as is my way, and lay there, still savouring the afterglow of our passion the night before.  The moon was shining through the window and it lit your face in a delicate glow that transcended time, space, emotion, everything.  For that simple moment, for that instant, that sliver of time, I knew that I loved you.  I was smitten.

You were all that I had imagined a companion could be and then some more.  So witty, so full of life.  A childish imp frolicking about on the fields of life, sneering at convention and the naysayers.  You represented all that I thought I should be, all that I wanted to achieve.  I could see me there, hoary head flecked with liver spots, rocking away on a porch with you by my side.  An old man, happy and fulfilled, companion by my side.  I knew it was to be.

...but the moon shines and it changes its face, does it not?  There were flashes of red, glowing coals of fire and brimstone that blistered out unchecked.  I percieved them but did not comprehend them.  Oh to have had some wise old codger slap his wrinkled hand upside my head and say "Boy! That one is trouble, open your eyes!", but there was none.  When those coals popped out I acted as if they were nothing.  I ignored that voice inside.  

Then the house, so delicately placed with the ace of hearts here, the queen of diamonds there, that house began to crumble.  The paradise I thought I knew began to change into a wasteland.  That beautiful serinity I saw in the moonlight was shown to be a mirage and the demon that dwelt below raised its grinning head and laughed at me as I sank into its entrapment.  

...and here I sit.  drawn, tense, undone, scattered.  The beautiful book that was to be written became a hideous scrawling of pain and remorse and blame.  

Someday I will rise, a phoenix? No.  An owl perhaps.  Maybe a sparrow.  I will rise on the wind, little but my own skin and feathers to keep me but free none the less.  Everything taken from me.  Everything.  The tragedy though, the tragedy is not that I am bereft.  The tragedy is that I have cast aside my pearls, my treasure to fill a void that cannot be filled.  I am undone, martyred.  I have drained my blood and my tears only to have them tossed to the wind, for when I am gone.....when I have blown away with the flotsam of discarded memory, what I have offered you will be forgotten as if it never was.  
Gladly I have bled for you.  ...but my blood is in vain..........

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