Regret is a kind keeper

I can feel the gentle pull. I can feel the seductive ways of complacency. Blaming the lack of time or the lack of motivation, turning away from the one thing that is the cause of such great pleasure. Such impossible pleasure. I must beg for help. Help to find my way back. Through thick glass, through mirrors that bend each and every way, distort the path, the vision. Through this tempting forest of savagery, through fire and lazy afternoons, I try to find my way back to the source of such great pleasure. The way back to my words. My precious words that keep me in line and hold my broken heart when the gentle snow covers the cracks on the sidewalks outside. Softly, melodiously, gently, almost invisibly covering all the lands, one flake at a time.

Regret holds me hostage, a kind and deceptive keeper. Almost unseen, almost hidden from the heart that is pure. Only in moments of doubt, in moments of grandeur does it appear and then full blast drills holes in the heart, in the soul. We know each other by first names, there is nothing I have not let regret have in my life. The open sea is my refuge. On a makeshift raft I pedal towards fear. Each moment closer, determined to reach dry land, but the sands greeting me on the shore cut my bare feet, burn the soft skin, play with me like fire burning. But it is still regret that saves me, still fear that pushes me. The road chosen will be the one I turn back from should I have the power. Wearily keep walking and with longing eyes look back at the distance travelled. The distance seems impossible to retract and my choice is only that to march forward. No chance to pause or rewind. Regret is a kind keeper, seldom allowing to glance backwards, abundantly giving rise to better the self at the craft, path, mission chosen. Regret is a kind keeper, unspoken.

You should stay unconcerned. These things that I dream, these words that I write, these turbulent waters that I navigate are steered well clear of you. I may never make it to shore. I may never find home. I may never see anything but these stick figures trying to point me in the right direction. And the incredible weight, the tethering pull of the anchor blinds me with pain. My heart breaks every time. Breaks every time for you. My path is covered with thorny vines, traps and mirages. The burden of your presence would kill us both, I must leave and you must stay. Be the keeper of your own illusions. Set the wind in my sails and fasten these friends: regret and fear, then gently continue, silently depart, aim for murkier, shallower, different waters. We are off. Make sure you never long for me again. Make sure your heart has cut all chords to mine. Only like this can we ever be free.

My time may never come. It may never be more than this: it may never be bigger, it may never be truer, it may never be more honest. I may be forgotten, left lying in the arms of regret. Like a beast then regret will hold the parts that are valuable and nobody will ever find. If this is my fate then let it be. If I am to put up a fight, then let the struggle begin. This is my story, one for nobody else to write. I may end up dead in the water, I may sail my ship of safety then sink it. I may find the courage to open my heart to you, I may never have the power to let you back in. I might befriend my kind keeper, eventually find  a sunny afternoon to escape from my self made prison. I may be all right then.

I may just be fine the way I am.

a terrible love

It is both disheartening and softly suffocating to have to wait for you. It is unsure how long you will still be. Time is a homogenous substance for you. It swallows you whole, engulfs you lovingly, just tight enough to enjoy the endless swim. Then you forget, in that euphoric lapse, in the desert like endless flowing sands of time you forget that you are to step out and commit to the meeting you arranged a while back. Not something that anyone will remind you of, the voices inner and outer are muffled underwater in time’s magical pool. Like slow falling snow quietens any busy city, brings its siren filled beating lanes to a sudden halt. All is better, unimaginably kinder with snow covered streets. Nothing to disturb the thoughts, no loud engines to snap those actually lost in thought back into the land of unsavoury rules. My yells are mere whispers but only when the winds are kind enough to blow in your direction. Hurry is what I yell. Fury is what you at times hear.
 

If the wait did not have its control over me, did not change me into a person inapt and inpatient, then I could have my peace with it. The wait is fading, like you forget to arrive, I forget to wait for you. To ready my heart, to ready my soul. I am caught off guard and walk past you for I am not ready. In every instant you could arrive and I have not been making way. That is you walking towards me but I rush on, busy attending to matters unimportant in their entirety. Then it might be too late. I fear it is already too late. Time’s seductive softness has kept you captive or I have missed the smiling face of opportunity all together. Fear has the greatest power and I cannot tell which is worse, your absence or my failure to commit to the wait.

 

It’s a terrible love. It is terribly absent. It is terribly distant in its hope of ever existing.

Oh, take it all away

There is an almost inevitable course that matters run through. Inevitably finite and calculated. Little room is left for the imagination to roam. For things to mould freely into shapes they desire. We may try to elude the force with which it winds down streets and roads we inhabit, but inevitably we must succumb and follow rank, accept that there is a course things must take. Unchangeable by decree, but soft for reshaping by the love and nurturing of the human spirit. The untameable goodness in mankind. Limiting, but in reality only challenging our collective creative effort to trick the straight into believing it is curved.  

Life hardens the soul. Inevitably hardens the desires and forces, secretly steals those instances that allow the want for grace to grow. With each year passing, the wall closing becomes less and less penetrable. The light that sifts through becomes less and less powerful. The sounds that crackle, secretly appearing, are never loud enough to lure all ears. Faintly we hold back. The soul knows no other way but to retreat in the face of such visceral force. The midnight silence amplifies the hearts that beat together, echoes that resonate the membrane malignantly growing between people, between souls that once wanted, ached for unity. Like stone statues, weathering sun and snow, frozen in time, motionless, we wait for life to take its course. For others to pass by. For hope to never have a chance of escaping this man-made hell.

Here is hope. How beautiful, how fragile. Hope never paraded its frail little body to tease those who saw it. Now almost invisible, translucent in the moonlight, powerless in the face of such adversaries. We must take arms, fight on the side of hope. Protect its right to exist in the hour of such inevitable times. Such predictable times, such dry and humourless times.

This journey will start without you. This journey I must take starts with only me. The dark alleys, the endless fields of luscious crops, bending in the wind, turning towards the sun, these woods that shelter lives interconnected below lifeless leaves and needless twigs, this is the way I must lead. Charge ahead in great confidence, yet stop for each and every soul that I catch a glimpse of. In time, in hope, I may catch sight of you. These days are so much more hopeful than the ones we are leaving behind. These moments of pain, locked in time and unable to escape or find forgiveness chain my heart back to the starting line. To start over and have a second chance. To come out of a maze just to enter again. Get lost in the idea that there is hope fighting the great battle inside hearts and souls.