Everything and Nothing

 I should have known. That loving a girl like her was like loving the past, you can’t change it. After all, she is a wild thing akin to a summer storm, for if a storm blows down your house or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean or cruel. It acted according to its nature and unfortunately, something was hurt. She is a silhouette running through a forest, with a smile as deadly as a dagger. It is only fair that I had hope.

I am neither a poet nor a wise man, but I can say that looking at this young lady was like staring at an open flame: you know it’s bad for you but you can’t help but stare. Wherever she stood she became the center of the room, not because she was loud or crude, but for the same reason a fire draws the attention of those around it: its warmth. I can not begin to describe her because the issue would be in comparison…if I told you she had black hair you would compare her with other women you have known to have black hair. But those women would not have her presence, her easy laughter, or her beauty. In what manner was she beautiful? I cannot say enough, so since I cannot say enough at least I will avoid saying too much. Instead, I will only say that she was lovely.

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. This saying couldn’t be any truer than it is right now. I loved her (clichéd as it may sound) in more ways than the word could ever account. I loved her more than the palm trees love to sway in the breeze, more than the bird’s nests love to sit in the trees or more than the rain loves the ground upon which it falls. My love for her was neither wise nor honest, but it was strong. A pure thing that filled the room and escaped through every crevice. But love is complicated, some love is like a wolf howling at the moon, ignorant but passionate; another type of love is like a cricket song, dissonant but incessant. But my love, my love for her was music -complete. Her place in my heart was so deeply rooted that she eventually became a part of me. Those who read this may think that I just miss her, but this would be far from the truth. Or perhaps I do miss her, in a debilitatingly way filled with longing, like ...

You hold onto people who don’t love you anymore like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the rocks even though he is being battered to death against them. You fear letting go for the same reason mountain climbers wear harnesses: you’re scared to fall. To fall into the abyss of ‘what now’, ‘what if I never love again’ or ‘what if love never finds me’. The truth is “part of the journey is the end” and you’re scared of it ever ending even though it already has. You hold onto the hot coals of the past, even as your hands continue to burn because you know to feel something is better than feeling nothing at all. Fear is why you hold on. A fear that is not real, ‘what if I fall’ you ask… what if you fly?