They come in droves.
Too many to count.
It’s as if there is no street beneath them.
Never have there been such countless numbers of people to gather at the deathbed of a love to watch it die.
Thousands of people, and all of them heartsick. speechless. sullen.
Dark suits. Dark dresses. Tinted glasses to mask the torture of the moment.
If there were eyes, there were tears.
If there were tears, there was grief.
The heart has a way of aching even in the absence of a beat.
And the ache it feels when it beats...inconsolable.
Flowers of every array are tossed along the roadway.
For miles the procession parades the streets.
For hours, people stand atop buildings, fire escapes, on cars, in windows, on shoulders.
It hurts to watch. It hurts not to.
For blocks, there plays but one song.
The Aftermath.
No words. No beat…just the resonant keys of a Steinway with strings in tow.
So poignant is it. It leaves one in shreds.
How does one live through such loss without losing self?
How does one consider this kind of bleeding as just one of life's certainties and moves on?
The horse-led carriage bends the corners and curves effortlessly.
The hooves sound like God.
The wheels, like Angels.
The sight of it is beyond words.
Undone would be the only fitting word to feel.
And there at the steps of the cathedral, she stands.
He pleaded with her to wear yellow on this occasion.
He loved yellow. But love amounted to nothing compared to what he felt for her.
He would say to her often, “Only a fool believes the heart is more important than the blood that powers it.”
This was his, “I love you.”
She would smile, “I want to. However long I live, I will want to.”
He called her the girl with the infinite want to.
He loved the possibility that she loved him.
She never said she did. She never acted as if she didn’t.
She only carried on as if she wanted to.
She looked at him as only she could.
She touched him as only he dreamed.
In her hand was the feather he gave her.
The one yellow feather in his pillow.
The one he gave credit for his many nights of peaceful sleep.
The pillow didn’t come that way. He found it on his windshield the day he met her.
After arriving home, he took a pair of shears and cut a tiny incision in the pillow,then stuffed the feather inside.
Before that night, every night was one filled with insomnia.
Every night thereafter, sweet sleep.
He gave her the feather the night he passed.
He told her to come dressed to match it when he was to be laid to rest.
She honored his wish even when purple was more to her choosing.
He asked her to cry out all of her love for him one last time on this day.
He wanted her to be able to move on.
He wanted her to give it all back so she could live with the reality of his absence.
He wanted her to know that what she gave was enough.
He hoped that she would regard his giving enough.
He knew this day would come. He knew it would be odious. Unpleasant. Immensely painful.
It feels like being struck by lightning on a clear day.
Like being trampled in a crowd-less square.
There was no contingency plan. There was no emergency broadcast system.
The heart breaks then bleeds profusely. Misery at high tide.
It all came crashing down. In its wake, ruins.
Glass-less windows. Doors dangling from hinges. Cracked foundations.
Decrepit halls once inside, now outside, ever victim to the ravaging effects of the elements.
There's a quiet about it.
It's frightening because it feels like anything we could say would be politics.
There isn't enough imagination to pretend it isn't real.
She stands tall and still. She can hear the carriage in its final turn.
Not many moments from now, she will look him over for the last time.
How does one prepare for this? Not the crowds. Not the music. Not the reticence.
But the absence. The nothing of it all. The enormity of such an empty.
What does one wear to that? What perfume will do? What heels will defy the moment?
Is there an accessory that can talk one back from the edge?
No, there isn't one.
It's been said that death is the grandest of explanations.
That it's “the because” for everything.
Death is reason.
Life comes from that one such no more.
A flower comes from a seed. A seed, from a withering flower.
What could be more sacrificial than a blossom?
She clinches the feather. She remembers how he looked at it.
She knew he was beyond reckoning.
The night he walked away from her, she said, I'll be seeing you.
He smiled, not if my last breath sees me first.
She cried, you couldn’t know how I feel about you.
You can't measure this weight I carry.
Numbers are amiss. Words slight. It’s a heist.
She said, we have things in common.
He told her they had each other in common and nothing more.
It was the only time he wished he would've remained quiet and let her expound.
Of all his misgivings, this was the mother.
He regretted it. He’d never before let her belief about his feelings wander.
There were no “You know far well my feelings” excuses made. He couldn't dare make her responsible for what he may have been too much a coward to tell her himself.
He wanted to tell her, but with her mouth and her words.
He wanted to hear her say, Love me, do you? The questioning and grasping in one fell swoop.
There’s a certain music to watching someone witness themselves discover.
He wanted her to be curious…unabashedly curious.
If she was, she never let on she was.
She was the poker player of poker players.
She so enjoyed cards, and as such she often pulled his.
He tried to respond in kind but his attempts were uninspired.
He told her he detested spades, but he loved the way she held the one card that could trump the whole deck. Herself.
She told him they were tied to one another, without end.
It scared him. He has a phobia of ropes.
The carriage moves slowly up the street until it comes to a standstill.
A raven is released. A dove is caged. It was to symbolize his new freedom and helotry.
She loved and hated it. It was a measure that had to be taken.
A missive was placed in her hand by one of the pallbearers.
Too many to count.
It’s as if there is no street beneath them.
Never have there been such countless numbers of people to gather at the deathbed of a love to watch it die.
Thousands of people, and all of them heartsick. speechless. sullen.
Dark suits. Dark dresses. Tinted glasses to mask the torture of the moment.
If there were eyes, there were tears.
If there were tears, there was grief.
The heart has a way of aching even in the absence of a beat.
And the ache it feels when it beats...inconsolable.
Flowers of every array are tossed along the roadway.
For miles the procession parades the streets.
For hours, people stand atop buildings, fire escapes, on cars, in windows, on shoulders.
It hurts to watch. It hurts not to.
For blocks, there plays but one song.
The Aftermath.
No words. No beat…just the resonant keys of a Steinway with strings in tow.
So poignant is it. It leaves one in shreds.
How does one live through such loss without losing self?
How does one consider this kind of bleeding as just one of life's certainties and moves on?
The horse-led carriage bends the corners and curves effortlessly.
The hooves sound like God.
The wheels, like Angels.
The sight of it is beyond words.
Undone would be the only fitting word to feel.
And there at the steps of the cathedral, she stands.
He pleaded with her to wear yellow on this occasion.
He loved yellow. But love amounted to nothing compared to what he felt for her.
He would say to her often, “Only a fool believes the heart is more important than the blood that powers it.”
This was his, “I love you.”
She would smile, “I want to. However long I live, I will want to.”
He called her the girl with the infinite want to.
He loved the possibility that she loved him.
She never said she did. She never acted as if she didn’t.
She only carried on as if she wanted to.
She looked at him as only she could.
She touched him as only he dreamed.
In her hand was the feather he gave her.
The one yellow feather in his pillow.
The one he gave credit for his many nights of peaceful sleep.
The pillow didn’t come that way. He found it on his windshield the day he met her.
After arriving home, he took a pair of shears and cut a tiny incision in the pillow,then stuffed the feather inside.
Before that night, every night was one filled with insomnia.
Every night thereafter, sweet sleep.
He gave her the feather the night he passed.
He told her to come dressed to match it when he was to be laid to rest.
She honored his wish even when purple was more to her choosing.
He asked her to cry out all of her love for him one last time on this day.
He wanted her to be able to move on.
He wanted her to give it all back so she could live with the reality of his absence.
He wanted her to know that what she gave was enough.
He hoped that she would regard his giving enough.
He knew this day would come. He knew it would be odious. Unpleasant. Immensely painful.
It feels like being struck by lightning on a clear day.
Like being trampled in a crowd-less square.
There was no contingency plan. There was no emergency broadcast system.
The heart breaks then bleeds profusely. Misery at high tide.
It all came crashing down. In its wake, ruins.
Glass-less windows. Doors dangling from hinges. Cracked foundations.
Decrepit halls once inside, now outside, ever victim to the ravaging effects of the elements.
There's a quiet about it.
It's frightening because it feels like anything we could say would be politics.
There isn't enough imagination to pretend it isn't real.
She stands tall and still. She can hear the carriage in its final turn.
Not many moments from now, she will look him over for the last time.
How does one prepare for this? Not the crowds. Not the music. Not the reticence.
But the absence. The nothing of it all. The enormity of such an empty.
What does one wear to that? What perfume will do? What heels will defy the moment?
Is there an accessory that can talk one back from the edge?
No, there isn't one.
It's been said that death is the grandest of explanations.
That it's “the because” for everything.
Death is reason.
Life comes from that one such no more.
A flower comes from a seed. A seed, from a withering flower.
What could be more sacrificial than a blossom?
She clinches the feather. She remembers how he looked at it.
She knew he was beyond reckoning.
The night he walked away from her, she said, I'll be seeing you.
He smiled, not if my last breath sees me first.
She cried, you couldn’t know how I feel about you.
You can't measure this weight I carry.
Numbers are amiss. Words slight. It’s a heist.
She said, we have things in common.
He told her they had each other in common and nothing more.
It was the only time he wished he would've remained quiet and let her expound.
Of all his misgivings, this was the mother.
He regretted it. He’d never before let her belief about his feelings wander.
There were no “You know far well my feelings” excuses made. He couldn't dare make her responsible for what he may have been too much a coward to tell her himself.
He wanted to tell her, but with her mouth and her words.
He wanted to hear her say, Love me, do you? The questioning and grasping in one fell swoop.
There’s a certain music to watching someone witness themselves discover.
He wanted her to be curious…unabashedly curious.
If she was, she never let on she was.
She was the poker player of poker players.
She so enjoyed cards, and as such she often pulled his.
He tried to respond in kind but his attempts were uninspired.
He told her he detested spades, but he loved the way she held the one card that could trump the whole deck. Herself.
She told him they were tied to one another, without end.
It scared him. He has a phobia of ropes.
The carriage moves slowly up the street until it comes to a standstill.
A raven is released. A dove is caged. It was to symbolize his new freedom and helotry.
She loved and hated it. It was a measure that had to be taken.
A missive was placed in her hand by one of the pallbearers.
It read:
Agony. My Dearest Agony,
I couldn't have dreamed you.
I couldn't have found anything remotely comparable to you in life,
So the afterlife insisted that I rummage its cupboard for an equivalent.
Perhaps the possibilities will be infinite, much like the feelings I hold for you.
For I now know that love is tragedy’s most blunt instrument.
I couldn't have dreamed you.
I couldn't have found anything remotely comparable to you in life,
So the afterlife insisted that I rummage its cupboard for an equivalent.
Perhaps the possibilities will be infinite, much like the feelings I hold for you.
For I now know that love is tragedy’s most blunt instrument.
We were in love parenthetically. My hope was that someday we'd be in love unequivocally.
Of course whenever I spoke of us in that light, you'd say that space in your heart was off limits as you'd locked it away in the depths of your being; uninhabited, untamed, and untouched.
It was your way of avenging the other parts of your heart, broken by indifference aficionados who bargained for your love in the currency of maybe.
But it wasn't off limits, was it?
The truth was that you lacked the wherewithal to get to that part of your being without the aid of something outside of yourself entirely: Me.
All of me.
And your thinking was rooted in the inescapable suspicion that all of me for a fraction of you was no bargain at all.
Nonsense. If anyone was to be pegged the emotional salvage yard, know this, the line filed behind me.
I also realize I never mastered you, how could i? But I tend to cling to things that make me swoon. Your smile did that.
I caught you off guard though. I surprised you.
You never saw me coming, not until now.
I’m of the belief that we did in fact have things in common.
We had you in common. I wanted you and you had you and the mere notion that I had to compete with you for you nearly drove me mad.
I also realize I never mastered you, how could i? But I tend to cling to things that make me swoon. Your smile did that.
I caught you off guard though. I surprised you.
You never saw me coming, not until now.
I’m of the belief that we did in fact have things in common.
We had you in common. I wanted you and you had you and the mere notion that I had to compete with you for you nearly drove me mad.
It was the epitome of the take.
It’s reminiscent of the night I got robbed at gunpoint beneath your bedroom window after we sat up half the night writing letters in each other’s hands. How foolish of that thief to take everything that couldn’t have possibly mattered less.
You ran down to me and in that moment I had everything; your eyes, your arms, your words, your thoughts, they all belonged to me.
It’s reminiscent of the night I got robbed at gunpoint beneath your bedroom window after we sat up half the night writing letters in each other’s hands. How foolish of that thief to take everything that couldn’t have possibly mattered less.
You ran down to me and in that moment I had everything; your eyes, your arms, your words, your thoughts, they all belonged to me.
Undivided attention goes to the highest bidder.
I was so wired. I could’ve made love to you in cursive.
I was so wired. I could’ve made love to you in cursive.
But your watching me drift off to sleep, post ordeal, was more making love than I ever could.
I still have your letters. I need only to clinch my fists to read them.
And you wondered why my hands were always balled. Wonder no more.
You had a way of making me want you outside the bounds of logic.
God willing, several thousand civilizations from now, some naïve soul will haphazardly
Comprehend how this occupation I have with you defies all reason.
My guess is that he’ll give it your name and love will wish it were you,
Though with all of my heart, I so believed that love was your alias.
Little did you know, I was onto you. You were the one secret I could keep.
However you must be feeling, know that I adore you. Utterly.
In everything and absolutely nothing, in the wealth and poverty of this moment.
In my hands, in my thoughts, in my heart, I adore you.
Love wishes to die but this way. Now, lay us to rest.
Past. Present. Without end. One.
She squeezed the missive tight enough to make the ink scream.
Her lips trembled a last whisper…Go.
The carriage began its trek to its final destination.
She declined the cemetery. It was last time she would know he was right there.
No more would his eyes find her in a crowded room and wrinkle with joy.
No more would his smile spread across his face for her to behold.
No more would his arms open and become the envelope to the love letter that she was.
No more of him for no more of her.
She exhaled slowly as the carriage rolled onward and let go of the feather to be swept from her hand up into the breeze. Beginnings are far more bereft of hope than endings, though many would insist otherwise. But there’s no mistaking that in due time, the two, like clockwork, indeed change places. Always.
I still have your letters. I need only to clinch my fists to read them.
And you wondered why my hands were always balled. Wonder no more.
You had a way of making me want you outside the bounds of logic.
God willing, several thousand civilizations from now, some naïve soul will haphazardly
Comprehend how this occupation I have with you defies all reason.
My guess is that he’ll give it your name and love will wish it were you,
Though with all of my heart, I so believed that love was your alias.
Little did you know, I was onto you. You were the one secret I could keep.
However you must be feeling, know that I adore you. Utterly.
In everything and absolutely nothing, in the wealth and poverty of this moment.
In my hands, in my thoughts, in my heart, I adore you.
Love wishes to die but this way. Now, lay us to rest.
Past. Present. Without end. One.
She squeezed the missive tight enough to make the ink scream.
Her lips trembled a last whisper…Go.
The carriage began its trek to its final destination.
She declined the cemetery. It was last time she would know he was right there.
No more would his eyes find her in a crowded room and wrinkle with joy.
No more would his smile spread across his face for her to behold.
No more would his arms open and become the envelope to the love letter that she was.
No more of him for no more of her.
She exhaled slowly as the carriage rolled onward and let go of the feather to be swept from her hand up into the breeze. Beginnings are far more bereft of hope than endings, though many would insist otherwise. But there’s no mistaking that in due time, the two, like clockwork, indeed change places. Always.
