Monday, December 31, 2012

The Last Diary Entry of the Old Man

[Part 1 of the "Diary Entries" series]

“I write so that you may live.

“Where I am where you once were, the city is deaf, the voices of all the lonely strangers unheard like the prayers of the hopeless, but I dare whisper your name in this muteness, this inconsolable silence, the sound of nothing, indifference unequaled, for though the days are unkind I find my refuge here, where grief is the only companion to be had, a cold shade to shelter the soul from the eternal warmth of the sun, and in this place of solace “never” is the longest word to escape my lips, endless as the days and nights of waiting, for you were gone long before I came here, like the footprints of a ghost.

“Where I am where you once were, the city is perpetually blind, unmoved by the grace of summer and the benediction of rain, its wounds like yours undone with the power of closed eyes, scars suddenly unremembered, forgetfulness having turned them invisible, folding back beneath the shadows of time, but somewhere in this landscape of monochrome and grey I can still see you, a bright but shapeless red neither here nor there, because memory is cruel, finding colors where there are none, stalking the spirit in its unguarded moments of solitude in a room as big as this heart.

“Where I am where you once were, the city is callous, its flesh pummeled by iron bars and machines that bore through it, pouring liquid concrete over its earthly skin, filling its holes and cracks so that it can never feel again, like you, once wrapped in your mortal layers of numbness, shielding you from whatever it is that makes the heart grow fonder, even while the world is set afire by men and women who weave sands into verses, sunshine into prose, the morning mist into music, all into little pockets of nostalgia, giving the past the justice that it deserves, but failing nonetheless, because you were born beautiful and you have had your eyes set on forever, a future so bright it blinds all memory.

“I am where you once were, and you are where I will soon be. This is a city where the chase is unforgiving, where what has been said is forbidden to overflow into what will be, because the rules of life are as fixed as our place beneath the stars, and though our feet may take us elsewhere we only really move around, closer and farther but never away, for here I now find myself in this city where you once were, and you are where I will soon be. The past. Moving around, closer and farther but never away.

“You are everyday — an empty seat in the crowded bus I have never taken, a corner in my mind where the light of the sun will never shine, a calendar stuck in a day by the end of a lifetime, a gift unwrapped by the grandchildren we will never have, a face with a thousand unsaid names, a floating cloud with the weight of a million cycles of rain on dreamy afternoons, a penny jammed in the coin slot of a telephone booth where a hundred calls and conversations have been made and a hundred or more will never be, a shoe lace waiting to be tied by the hands I will never hold, a smudge on the lips I will never kiss.

“If I make it seem that I am talking to you, it is surely because I am. But I am not a surgeon, and so I cannot replace your heart with mine to make you understand, even for a pulse, how it feels to live with a heavy heart. Then as now, you are the reflection of the sunset in my eyes, and they will not close in permanence until I have chased the sun, because you are the center of my everything in every day, the sum of all my desires, beyond measure, ruling my life from the distance of a thousand light years, maybe more, and across this vast emptiness between us my voice yearns to travel, breaking the rules of physics if need be, for the laws of science will have to end if the chambers of the heart are to be finally heard, revealed in their naked truths with neither shame nor arrogance to cloth them from the mercy of your gaze. Until then, you remain a reflection of the same repeating sunset in my eyes even if the sun is never the same as yesterday and the dusks long gone.

“You are January lost in July, or December spending time in May. I am Monday skipping the rest of the week in pursuit of Sunday. You are February with only thirteen days, a pocket watch with nothing more than a hand for every second. I am a dead and exploded ventricle in the heart of this city, and yet here I am, scavenging through the arteries of roads in search of your faintest traces, signs that you were once here, alive, breathing the same air as I do but only forty years too late.”





Part 1 | 2

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is sad.

SPLICE said...

'Tis.

kae said...

:'( i embrace death so we could be together again

SPLICE said...

My apologies if the things I write get you and most other readers a bit depressed. I can't help writing about things like these.