There are nights...when I walk alone through the silent streets of this
forlorn town, down cobblestoned promenades where my heels click in a
synchronistic tempo with the beating of my labored heart. I pass shops long
closed, their tawdry wares hung like the bodies of condemned men behind the
panes of glass which separate the cold air of commerce from the colder air
of my Night. The town where I live lies comatose once the midnight hour has
fallen. The avenues as isolated and frozen as its citizens who slumber
behind the aluminum siding of their own discontent. And I, like some
desolate outsider, am left to keep my lonesome vigil, forever walking the
boulevards of my own broken dreams.
There are nights...as many a person sleeps, dreaming their rose colored
visions of the world, I am left to carve out the few hours of lassitude
that my body needs to replenish itself. My dreams are of the isolation that
none can bear, the desperation only those who go unloved can appreciate. My
soul languishes in its bed of glass and barbed wire cautiously venturing
out of itself only to be rebuked by those it would dare to love. My
somnabulatory visions serve little to rehabilitate this disease of the
spirit in which I exist, more so to deepen the malaise that haunts my
fevered psyche.
There are nights...that I dare, as Nietzsche once suggested, to look into
the abyss and find that it is, indeed, my own frantic face that stares back
at me. The desperate loneliness that overwhelms my soul becomes too much
and I make my half hearted attempts to silence this pain. However, if truth
be told, a coward lies behind these cold eyes of mine. A child who so fears
that which is unknown that he dare not, could not, end his suffering. So,
instead, I remain in the solitary penitentiary that is my intellect.
Standing before God and humanity, betrayed by my own cowardly equanimity. I
am left to wander, a casual observer to my own existence and to my
desperate plea for a summation to my affliction.
I watch for quite some time as you slumber. Your ebony hair drapes across
the nape of your neck like a silken ribbon. The coolness of your skin
wicks away my body's precious warmth as I run my hands across your forearm.
The softest hint of your perfume wafts elegantly to my nose and reminds me
of the small coffee house where we met and when your aromatic signature
first caressed my senses. There is a slow yet constant dripping as pearls
of water strike an unseen metallic surface. Your lips are pursed in your
angel's repose silently offering themselves to me. I bend to kiss them
lightly only to find them closed and unyielding.
You sleep on.
The shimmering paleness of your dress is outshined only by your ivory skin
and I think to myself that I have never seen you look more beautiful. Dark
purple ribbons, attached in a military row, punctuate your gown. A fragile
lace veil covers your closed, still eyes and I long to gaze into the
already cloudy visage that lies beneath. You always gave away insights to
yourself with your eyes. Like some cold conspirator, your soul would lay
itself open to my fiery heart. Now all that you were has been stolen from
me.
So I stand, dressed in my tuxedo and you in your gown on our "wedding" day. Your makeup seems hastily applied and I rub my finger across your cheek to help blend the blush. I learn then just how cold a body can be. Your cheeks always burned with the warmth of the sun and now the embers lay beneath your skin as cold as the clay from which they sprang. My eyes beg for the opportunity to weep, but they emptied themselves long ago. My heart cries to the heavens and searches for a solution...and continually goes unanswered. I take you in my arms and hug you quietly to my chest. My sight is blurred as my eyes find an unknown wellspring of tears. I stare into your beautiful face and give myself over to the words I had rehearsed and rehearsed, hoping that one day I could finally say:
"I do."
