We stand on the bluffs above the breakers, watching the sea foam swirl like the madness of our broken world. We linger. The dense feeling of fate pervading us. The unbreakable diamond line tethering us to the crystalline moment, frozen in a picture, put in a box, never to be seen again. The wind blew and a pinprick shift in movement, insignificant as an eyelash, brought down an empire made of ash. We walked those charred triumphant streets, riddled with rotting bouquets of flowers from yesterday’s parade. It was time to take comfort in strangers. She turned to me, “I want love like the ocean, it always comes back”. I think of her floating on the Adriatic contemplating our blossoming love, croatian street art, and holding her body close as a baby in the floridian waves. Now a million shards of glass laid lost on the savage sea floor, mirrors reflecting a thousand truths, hidden from her eyes by the churning tide.
Words don't matter anymore. I scream in frustrated contempt, “Why are you acting crazy! Why are you disturbed? Where is redemption here?” It is gone for now, a dog running wild in the woods. I wake up and try to explain the unconsciousness, but it’s like singing to a self possessed crowd in a run down karaoke bar. Grasping at cigarette smoke.
My last act of friendship could be to obliterate you and expose you for the liar you are. Instead I will let silence settle over any righteousness I feel, any angle of truth I claim to possess, letting the birds sing their songs for us, and the thrum of the world will hold me in its arms. I will release the great burden there alone. “There are things I can tell you, and there are things I cannot say, I hold nothing against you, I forgive you.”
“You are a child, I do everything for everyone, I give everything, and everyone just takes from me!” She viciously hisses in another’s voice, a harpy sent for blood, *****, and sacrifice, lashing about with claws meant to tear out the heart of man.
“I may have a child’s heart, filled with infinite forgiveness. I may be a flawed man, but I won’t turn from that truth, in it is wabi sabi beauty. I’m not seeking to rationalize or justify my actions, the past doesn’t interest me that much anymore. The feeling you give me now is a toxic one, like a ****** hitting rock bottom, I want the poison out of my veins.”
More screaming. Rampage, wrath, hell fury and doom. An **** of anger directed at my peaceful countenance, an all out assault fueled by brimstone, baiting the Buddah under the bohdi. My murderer is my muse. The citadel is overrun again by the Amazonian hordes set for the massacre, spear point to throat, mutilating the glinting marbled halls, painted red. So **** me now, my quiet pride and solemn truth are unassailable. You lob bombs at an iron sky. One built after years of hellish wildfire to bring down Zion. Yet the walls drip with life, you can taste it in the air. The overcoming of emotion, like fresh white clouds drifting above bloated bodies floating dead on the burning acrid water. And maybe only a dry heart pulp remains in the humid sun, but I don’t think so, there is juice here in this soul, the nectar is still sweet, tempered by age. I bite my tongue and laugh at the helplessness of love gone wrong, a faux pas matched only by a priest farting at a funeral. I wink at death, clapping and singing songs with a final gasp, we die like Hector dragged in the dust.
Days later, she writes a mixed apology. Staking a claim on humanity. Can she see into her own eyes? Does she know the past as I do, can she own her duplicity, her renunciation of all that she claims to hold dear? We were one once. Symbiotic, duads, all I did, she did, all I was, she was. Blame still taints my heart.
I want to strip off my clothes and howl in the rain, as the forest sends thunderous chamber hall applause to my release. I want to howl for the toil. I want to howl for the ecstasy. I want to howl for all the unrecognized love, all the unfulfilled expectations, the selfishness, I want to howl for the sacrifice, and the collapse of return, I want to howl.
Somewhere, does my scream still echo? A voice on the radio answers.
“Those things you keep, you better throw them away. You want to turn your back, bury your old ways. Once you were tethered, and now you are free. Once you were tethered, well now you are free. That was the river, this is the sea!”
I walk around a drafty room, hugging myself like a crying orphan seeing all the doors closed on the last day of autumn. If I can make it through the biting winter; holed up somewhere in an abandoned hollow, hands in ratty brown clothe gloves, patched pants and ***** scarves, spring will be beautiful, and I will lay in fields of burgeoning new blossoms. A thousand times Odysseus.