Let Go

The yellow puddles of dirty light illuminate your downturned head and slumped form as you walk slowly and reluctantly from lamp post to lamp post. You are sadness incarnate and I cannot bear to see you so. I wonder at how much of your burden is that which I gave to you without ever understanding that was how things would be between us. 

If I could take it back, I wouldn’t. You were an unrepeatable moment in my life and I couldn’t give you up. Although I did, in the end. When I realised that my love would be your undoing. When my being in your life began to hurt you, I walked away. I let you go.

I could never let you go. You are my obsession. I hanker after that which we once had. Knowing that we will never again be together. But our separation is gossamer thin. I see you and I know you still. You were mine and I will always be yours. A part of me resides within you and I know it must be the same for you, because we are here and you are unwittingly sharing this dance with me. 

The dance that I have indulged in ever since we parted. I wanted the best for you. But I could never stop wanting you. I cannot bear the permanence of our separation. I would die if I thought I would never see you again. You were my last true love. No one else could fill the hole you left within me. A space I am acutely aware of as you walk away from me towards the place you call home.

But that cannot be your home. Even though I linger still. We haven’t imbued this place with enough of ourselves for it to be ours. For it to be the safe harbour where we could lay in each other’s arms and see beyond the plaster, timber and tiles to a universe that was ours for the taking.

We were lovers. We journeyed beyond the stars and lost ourselves in each other. Your mouth pressed to mine, breathing sweet life into me as we explored each other. Skin to mind to soul. I was whole when I was with you. Dizzied by your love. Intoxicated by your presence. I drew you in and dared not breath out in case I was to lose any of you so carelessly. For a while, there was no need for words. There was only us. A oneness and an isness that defied the gods and shone brighter than the sun.

Our end was in our beginning. We shone too brightly to ever last the course. Ours was a time that was destined to become legend. I see you in the mists of the myth that we made real. I have trapped you in the amber of my obsession and I cannot let you go. I won’t let you go. 

You shut the door on me and I stand in the shadows below your bedroom window. You will never know of the desperate longing that I nurture for you. With a force of will, I refrain from calling out your name. Demanding that you throw open your windows and look upon me once more. Your one true love. 

Our beauty will never fade. It is timeless. But still I fear the passing of time. Time is a thief. I witnessed its relentless work. Time is a jealous beast corrupting the life that surrounds it. Aided and abetted by its dark twin; death.

For an age I have kept my distance. But I see how heavy the world weighs on you now and I cannot stay away for much longer. I must see you once more. Look into those eyes that held an eternity of love whenever I gazed into them. I will lose myself in you one more time.

But tonight, I slip away and return to the life that chose me. The compulsion that led to our parting. We all of us have two sides. Now I must attend to my dark half and leave you to take care of my light. I left it with you for safe keeping , never wanting to admit that I would never take it back. The dice was rolled and I chose the wrong wager to win. My victory was the worst loss imaginable. For that, I will forever be sorry. You are the one regret in this life of mine.

I could never take it back though. That was never a choice afforded to me. And so I did the best I could. Clung onto the best of both worlds. A life of distant compromise. Standing on the deck of my ship and gazing out towards the shoreline of you. I miss you with a vengeful and gentle anger, a deep frustration that grates against my skin whenever I have to leave you. It is scant consolation to know that you are in the world. I must at least see you to know the truth of your presence. The constancy of your gravity can only be experienced when you are in the sky above me. 

Waiting is a torture which I inflict upon myself night after night. I see you and know how easily I could close the gap and shatter the illusion of our separation. This is no magic beyond the physics of you being there and my being here. With a few purposeful steps I could end my exile. But I fear our reunion and the potential for rejection. We have been too long apart. The reconciliation of what we carry within us to that which resides in the world may be a violent ending, not the sweet conclusion I have always hoped for. 

We may break each other apart with the force of our presence. Worse still, we may stare blindly into an abyss. Our having squandered and lost everything we ever had, leaving a hell of nothingness that draws us into a vacuum of endless despair. 

Perhaps it is best to reside within the dream of you. To make of you a vessel for what might have been. Safe in the knowledge that you never moved on either. Neither of us ever found another. No one could measure up to what we had. And so they fell by the wayside as soon as they showed their lacklustre faces in the orbit of our lives.

I wait and I wait some more. The right moment never presents itself and then I see that it passed me by some while ago. Not the right moment, but the best of the moments presented to me. Now I feel an increasing pressure to get the deed over and done with. There is an inevitability that is fed up of my procrastination. It tuts and mutters at my pathetic ways. Taunts me with the shame of my fear. Little does it know that its presence gives me something to fight. An excuse to prolong the agony even further. And so I wait.

Tonight, I saw you stagger and my breath caught in my throat. You entered a pool of that jaundiced light and paused before falling towards the cold metal post. Almost too late, your hand came up to arrest your progress and you buckled towards the unforgiving lamppost. 

I was there by your side, arm encircling your waist before I knew what I was doing.

“What took you so long?” you asked me as I helped you to your door.

I smiled awkwardly before lifting your chin up and looking into those eyes of yours. The eyes hadn’t changed one bit, even as the rest of you had aged and decayed around them. 

“You’re old,” I told her.

“Ever the charmer,” she said chuckling to herself as she held my gaze, “you’re old too.”

She raised a hand to my cheek and a tear rolled down her own, “why?” she asked me.

I shook my head. Even after all these years, I didn’t have an answer for her.

I could have kissed her then, but I didn’t. Something prevented me from doing so. She prevented me from doing so. Her recriminations were accusatory barbs that shamed me. Suddenly I didn’t want to be here. My power ebbed away from me and I was all hers. We stood like this. Reading each other, but not understanding the words. The meaning would come in time. Perhaps after the fact when it was too late to do anything about it.

I remembered what it was to love this woman. What it was to love. And only then did I realise that I had run from that love. A noble coward dressing his betrayal up as a reasonable excuse. Telling myself that I did the right thing by her and for her when all it was, was a self-serving retreat into my addiction.

Turning from me to unlock the door to her house I experience an echo of my loss of her and the future we dreamt of together. A taste of the punishment I so deserve. I hover at the doorway as she shuffles in, “come in,” she says with an edge of frustration, “don’t just stand there.”

She turns right into the first available doorway. I follow her in time to see her collapse onto a threadbare sofa. I sit gently beside her, and as she composes herself I look around the room, recognising her artwork upon the walls. Reacquainting myself with her. This may not be our home, but it is her space and it pulses with her life. I am back where I have always belonged and I would cry with the joy and sadness of it, if I could remember how to do so.

Sighing, she takes my hand and squeezes it, “my beautiful, beautiful man. I’ve missed you so. I missed you with a strength that I didn’t know I possessed, for such a time. And then I gave up on you until I thought I no longer missed you. But that was a lie. I miss you the same as the day you left.”

“I have missed you too,” I echo.

“Not enough!” she snaps, and I remember how bold and strong she could be. How she would tell my off in an unexpected instant. And yet I never faltered in my love for her. Not until I left her and failed both her and our love.

“I am impossibly old, you fool!” she squeezes my hand harder than her age could allow. There is an anger here. A fermented resentment, “you have kept me alive far too long!”

“What…” I stammer, taken aback by her accusation, “I…”

She shakes her head and stares at me with eyes that haven’t aged at all. A fearsome lioness putting the lion in his place, “you couldn’t have me, so you made darn sure no one else did. Anyone showed an interest, and you put paid to them.”

“Oh…” I say. That single word confirming a guilt she has already proven.

“Oh?” she hisses, “you even took my friends from me!”

“I just wanted you to be safe…” my words trail off. How could I have gotten this so badly wrong?

With her free hand she waves at her body and face, “I don’t know how you’ve done this, but I’m a walking miracle. Or a living curse, depending on how you look at it.”

I thought I knew how I’d done it. Hadn’t meant to, but how often is that the case? We don’t think, we just bowl in and do as we please. “I couldn’t let go.” I tell her, slipping my other hand around hers, “I couldn’t let you go.”

She sighs then and all her defiance leaves her. She slumps towards me and I enfold her in my arms, “nor I you,” she says softly as she rests her head upon my chest, “there was only ever you.”

I kiss the top of her head and gently pull her closer. Breathing the scent of her in. I have waited too long for this moment and now I want it to last forever.

She breaks the spell with words of an ending. “I have felt you in every day of my life. More so at night. I wasn’t just remembering the way you used to look at me. You were looking at me. There was a dark magic at play. I realised that as the days rolled into years and then decades. I aged, but I didn’t die.”

She lifts her head and looks up at me, there is a sadness and a pleading in her eyes, “you have to let me go now. I can’t go on like this. I cannot endure another second of this pain, it hurts too much. It’s always hurt and that was OK for such a long time. It was a price I was more than willing to pay. I missed you like the flowers miss the sun. They don’t know that the sun will return each day, and so each night, they die inside and mourn the beauty of their time in the light of their lovers gaze. I knew you’d come back one day. And now you have, and it is time. My time. You kept me waiting too long. But I am glad we have this moment. It feels so good to be in your arms once more. I only ever felt safe when you embraced me.”

She smiles up at me and I frown despite my urge to reflect that smile, “I’m so sorry,” I say to her softly.

“I know,” she says smiling again, but with a sadness of finality, “there’s nowhere I’d rather be than with you right now. It is a fitting way to die. In your arms. Where I always belonged.”

“I don’t want…” I begin.

“Shhh, we were never destined to get what we want,” her eyes sparkle with mischief, “now kiss me, you fool, and put an end to this.”

She always knew me the best. She knew what I had done, and what I was. She also knew that I could never refuse her. Never. I was more hers than she was ever mine. Her spirit ran free and I was content to witness her life. In the end I trapped that free spirit, but it is me who will reside in this trap after she is gone. Alone. Alone when I could have brought her with me. 

I never even asked her.

I thought there was no need for words and now I will reside in a silence of my own making. Things could have been so different. But I didn’t want this for her. I really didn’t. She deserved better. Problem is, I took the possibility of better from her because I couldn’t bear to lose her. I lost her all the same. And here she is. In my arms. All I ever wanted.

I lean down and kiss her and my obsession fades and falls away. There is only us. I lose myself in her one last time. Responding to the music of her sighs and her moans. 

I don’t know when the addiction takes over. I am tasting her and I am overwhelmed by the stubborn energy that resides in this old woman. My mouth pulls at her life hungrily and I draw it from her.

When it is done she slips from my arms for the very last time. Unspeakably light. My impossible dream is over. She is no more. I have taken her and I know she is inside me, and yet she is gone. There is nothing of her here anymore. Only the memories encapsulated in the paintings on the wall. Memories that are hers and hers alone. None of this is mine. But then, I am no longer me. I am addiction. A dark hungry shadow that can never be sated. 

She was the best of me. The custodian of my soul. And for a while I was able to dwell upon this earth with a semblance of my humanity intact. We live on in those who love us. Now she is gone and I am lost. My obsession with the sanctity of our life was always going to succumb to the addiction that I chose one night all those years ago. A mad notion that she and I could live forever, when we’d already found our forever person. I was greedy and I wanted more, even when I had it all. 

She was the best of me, and I betrayed her. She loved me with all her heart and every ounce of her being and yet I couldn’t stand to be in the light of her love. I felt it burning me and I was rendered fearful and cowardly. And so I foolishly gave away my worth and replaced it with a darkness that takes and takes and leaves me ever more empty. 

Now I remember how it is to cry. I weep tears of blood for my love. I hold her in my gaze for one final time. And I wait. Waiting is something that I can usefully do. I am well practiced in wasting my time in waiting. And as the sun comes up, I smile at the burning heat of her love and I hope that we will be reunited in the next life, to love each other the way we were always meant to. As the sun’s rays fall upon me, I feel her embrace and her lips find mine and I say the words I was too afraid to say. I say them all whilst I still can. And the light intensifies, and I feel her more now than I ever have. I feel it all for the very first time and I am no longer afraid.