“And In the half light, see me as I am” – Jeff Buckley, Opened Once

November 2nd came close to her door. Too close. Stood in front of it for a heartbeat and watched the years fade away. There was no welcome parade in the sky above. The stars hadn’t arrived yet to light my way back to insignificance. Just the black on black of an Autumn night. I was back there again. Inside on the outside. She was inside me again. Behind the fortified wall built by muscular fears lay remnants of our transient lives lost in the fire where we danced the Kamikaze Waltz with our dreams and nightmares bound as one. Memories.

Tell me I got it all wrong. I won’t deny it. Naivety shrouds the slow development of cynicism, but I was guilty from the womb, cause it was those same infantile tears I cried when you closed that last chapter of our story. I was your open book but somehow the plot and character development got too heavy to make sense of. Stunted growth or premature maturity, I couldn’t tell. I mean love was all I knew back then. That silly love that some men and women try to hide from, lest it be taken for weakness or granted. I couldn’t hold it in. When that water rises up from the deep, it takes down all in its path like a rapture with contempt. It must have been scary for you to have to contend with that brazen, cavalier young man, though you loved me too even when it manifested in the most self destructive way. Pushing me to despise you was an exercise in vain. I couldn’t turn away.

I think I understand it now. You had to escape my love. You would never have survived it. To be loved the way I loved you would have cost you your identity and anonymity, because as Baldwin said, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” So you chose to remain a mystery, and kept me on the leash of your shadow. My best friend and a stranger. I embraced the mystery and all that volatile beauty that came in the package of your body, mind and soul. That’s what you were to me. Beautiful. And I was right there for all that pain that kept you a prisoner of your secrets, though I couldn’t heal you with words or kisses. Like you, I was a wounded creature on insecurity highway. With the blood flowing I still found cold comfort in your touch. With your lips you ushered me into your labyrinth world and left me with hand me down hopes of a future together. The same hands that gripped my back would cast me back to the poverty of your absence from my life on that Rocket ship that Stevie sang of. And when you offered me your precious temple without regard for its value, you might remember that I made it clear that I couldn’t afford your “spoilt goods”. You were more valuable to me than any ambition I could conjure up in the folly and virility of my youth. You were all those nights of dreaming, and praying, and longing which turned into years. We were lovers before we ever were. You knew that too. We were the half of each other. We were the unspoken words in a glance across tables of chattering friends and escalators on opposite sides. We were the solace in a momentary embrace which felt like a lifetime. And when we held each other, when we rolled in that roller coaster of emotional chaos, that took on various forms of passive and reactive aggression all the way round, I saw you hiding in there. I saw you naked in the dark. Did you know that? I saw you as you were in true likeness and I knew that I would always love you.

For Victoria (Wherever you are)