what is love ?

love liberates, she writes, love doesn’t hold but instead gives freedom. another reminds me that love demands protection, that it will die if you do not safeguard it.

not just romantic love, but love love.

while these two thoughts could seem, on the surface, at war with one another, i understand and believe both, though i have been unsure how to operate under these terms.

having said that, one thing has been made clear to me as of late:

he looks happy.

pictures of his laughing, smiling face float in the online universe like exploding stars begging me to smile back. he made a decision to live a life without me in it, not just without me as a partner but without me as a friend, and he seems to be doing well. better, even.

that’s what i want for him, finally — to be happy. that, i’m sure of, and can’t justify asking for more.

maybe that’s what love is.

123.

today:

mom is one year older.
she is still as beautiful as ever.
it’s so hard to leave her behind every time.

today:

he sat across from me 6 years ago.
we used the date as part of a secret code.
i wonder if he remembers.

today:

i wish numbers didn’t haunt me so.

curious table manners.

i danced in the kitchen last night. it felt really, really good.

 

erased from memory.

“i’ll be thinking about this for weeks,” he reassured me.

weeks…

“… months,” he quickly added in.

to let me know perhaps, that he would give it the weight it was due.

months…

earlier, we’d reminisced over a few special memories we shared. i reminded him about one of my earliest ones—the garden, the bicycle, the sunny day, the lying in the grass. i waited for him to smile at the memory, but he didn’t and spoke of other things.

outside, stars swam in the darkness that comes before the sun rises.

and so the countdown begins.

the day is coming.

i don’t want to be angry anymore.

the last person.

i have spent countless conversations defending this person from the wrath of this city, raising this person’s qualities up to the light, like a gem being appraised for its worth.

see how it glimmers ? here, look at this beautiful flaw. i point to it, and hope the friend in disbelief will eventually see it too.

she’d worn faces i chose to stare head on, when everyone else turned away. i see the pain she masks. i also see the wounds she inflicts on others. i understand how you feel, i empathize with her victims. she doesn’t always see what she’s doing, try to forgive her. i repeat these words over and over again, hoping they’ll sink into their raw flesh and scab over.

she pierces deeply.

but without question, i had accepted the challenge as her public defender. a defender of the crazy ones. the reckless ones. the unfiltered ones. maybe if i protect her, someone will protect me too.

tonight, i woke up thick-tongued and blurry-eyed from what felt like a drug-laced slumber. there, on my screen, flashed her name, next to a neat little package of ugly words glazed in honey. they spilled everywhere and slithered like tiny, sticky snakes under my skin.

i felt sick. so it’s come to this.

in every relationship, there is a moment or a series of moments that begs you to decide whether you should fight forth.

that moment has come for us and for the first time in my entire life, i am okay with walking away. nevertheless, i can’t help but hope she won’t feel too lonely.

*

within seconds, i am reaching for the person i find comfort in knowing he exists when life gets fuzzy. i imagined laying my makeshift soul down next to his, magically inflating my dried up heart with his unbeatable hugs. no one can hug me the way he does.

how cruel life is then that i would forget this: he is now the last person i am allowed to reach for. just as i stepped down from my position as her protector, he had taught me first by example just weeks ago: you step down like this.

and then he was gone.

life and its ironies make for a cleverly dark off-broadway show.

pending title: Everything is Temporary.

one day i might look back and laugh. maybe shake my head, amused.

but at 4am this morning, i am just tired.

how did we get here ?

he hadn’t felt like himself in 6 years, he said.

in 13 days, we will have been in each other’s lives for exactly that long.

the first is the result of the second.

the cold realization took my breath away, and i sat in the passenger
seat, stunned, trying desperately to recognize the face before me.

how could two people who once loved each other so much, get here ?

how do you shake the despair from the knowledge that you’ve given 6 years
to an illusion ? that you may have broken this person without knowing it ?
and that you can’t fault each other because we tried to make each other happy.
but tell me, what sort of sick happiness is that ?

maybe what i’ve found here is the cruelest lie of all:
those who are not as they seem.

don’t ever let yourself go there, and blame it on someone else.

aching.

what do you do when your heart aches ?

fuck.

here in the corner of this walled-garden.

i wore a long black skirt that day, and had thrown a pink polo on as an afterthought – my outfits were all over the place in college. the sun shone into the square, draping the windows in a light gold. i saw him ride up on his bike, as planned, and pull up to our corner. he climbed up the slope of grass and sat down under the shade of a tree.

i approached him, heart quickening like a girl with a crush too big for her, and sat down by his side. the grass felt pleasantly cold beneath my fingertips, brightly green and protected by the arms of the tree above us. here in the corner of this walled-garden, on this sunlit afternoon, we too were safe, we too were glowing.

i straightened my skirt and laid down, my head reclining into his lap, and smiled quietly into his kind, brown eyes. he brushed my hair gently behind my right ear and smiled:

“you are beautiful.”

i believed him then. we were perfect then.

it is one of the few memories of us i recall in such detail.

on the 20th.

looking through these recent entries, there is an odd pattern. i’ve written one entry per month, each published on the 20th.

october 20th.
november 20th.
december 20th.

what is it about this day of the month that unleashes unto the world what i keep in the dark all other 29 days ?

tonight, at 1:15am, we will see the moon glow red, and coincide with the winter solstice. this has not happened in 372 years. this makes me feel giddy and small all at the same time.

how i wish a writer in cold dark russia would be so inspired by tonight’s event that he take this small but extraordinary blip in the history of All Things Beautiful and transform it into The Great Love Story. and having once read it, remind our sad souls the things we forget.

how timing, at precise intersections, can extract all color from the world.

or, for the struggling optimist, how it can recreate and give birth to Light.

remember that the world cannot know Dark without life-giving and precious Light.

just as we can’t fully grasp Joy rushing through our weightless bodies without heart-stopping, breath-cutting, soul-violating, Gutting Pain.

tonight, 150,000 lives will see the last of their days. 380,000 will see their first.

wishing the best to us to all tonight.