Marriage

How do we choose the ones we spend the rest of our lives with? People read through their vows but to sit and contemplate each word should be enough to overwhelm any one of us. The profoundness of each promise, each commitment. In a world full of lives each so unique, both in similarities and differences. Each so temporary, and yet their ripples permanent. How does one, with their own talents and abilities, their own weaknesses and deficiencies; how does one select one, and only one, and find contentment? Is it resignation, defeat, acceptance, realism? What is the nature of marriage? Is it when we see the worst of ourselves in a mirror and satisfy our adventurous desires by being grateful that someone should love us despite ourselves? Is it something to pity? Our most pathetic moment? Standing outside it feels weak. Standing at an altar I see them ruled by fear irrespective of the words they so robotically repeat and the customs they so dutifully observe. A celebration of none other than the deterioration of a beautiful mirage from this point forward. Lies all told with such conviction and belief. We happily delude ourselves into believing we are good men. Good women. Good husbands and wives. Everything about a lifetime of love cries to me of defeat. A fear of death. Our attempts at immortality. And yet I recall when I was at deaths door, and wanted no more than to lose myself in one heart, feel one vessel, kiss her lips alone. I recall when I forsook all the stars in the night sky for an apparition. When nothing felt more real. It was I then, that was defeated, for I longed not for what was mine, but peering through a window at shadows, of all I dreamed you to be.

Patience

And now comes the wait. By far the hardest part. The minutes stretch into hours, and hours into days. None condensing under the weight of longing, that I may bring you closer. On the other side of patience lies death, that when you acquiesce, our time is shortened twice. Now in the waiting, each testing moment wasted on dreaming, and when such dreams may come true, less life to spend with you. Time on its own, regardless of you and I. I am powerless against it, powerless with you, powerless except in longing, powerless. Spend our hours on nothing, if it’s nothing you value, all my hours yours to plant as you please. I stare at the ground where I picture our tree, water it with hope, for nothing is impossible, but still ground I see. Parched feet on parched soil, where did the days go? No apples to taste you with, no seed that I may be forever planted within you, no wood to keep our fire burning. Left with a night sky and stars, falling like the monsoon rains. Each dying under their own longing. How many others are there like me? No time for self pity, waste not these gifts, for whilst any remain, daring to burn themselves for you, nothing is impossible.

Love Letter

The lives of people seem so ordinary, so pointless. We sit here on this giant rock we call earth, for maybe 90 years if we are lucky, when even 100 is too short. We sit here, 6 billion of us, each lost in our own lives, in our own meaninglessness, in our own pointless being. Proving only that there is nothing worth having or doing. Whatever we do, how can one person make a difference in 6 billion? And then there are billions in every generation. Thousands of years we have existed, thousands, thousands each with their billions. We are not the stars, we are the spaces between them, such is our inconsequence. I am not a star, I am the rock that floats aimlessly in space until I burn when looking to touch something, becoming no more than dust. Even less now than I was before, spread out amongst the heavens and the stars that shine so bright that no one sees me. Such is our status in this world, in the history of time, in all that matters. So I sit here, at a café, writing something that will someday disintegrate into the ground, when your hand drops it by a dusty road and I am less than a memory.

Why waste pointless time on a pointless story, when the point is only that there is no point in anything? Because and only because I choose to believe the worthless are worth something in each other. There are things in this universe that would humble the wisest man, shock the most intelligent, and yet all are rendered even more dumbfounded in something so simple – each other. What is a life worth… nothing. Some are lost without any value at all. What is a life worth to you? That is all that matters. What is anything worth to you? The comet is meaningless in this great expanse, but the expanse is not meaningless to the comet, and in this paradox, this distinction, lies the beauty of the stars. They are but burning fires so distant that we would confuse them for gems scattered across the night sky. Fires burning themselves to extinction, until we weave them into necklaces for those we love. Nothing means anything and everything is pointless, except in each other. We live through others, and in our disturbance of their lives. I only exist because those that love me say so. If there was no one that was moved by me, I would be that rock in the sky that shall never be seen, or felt.

Our time in this world is short. We have days and hours to appreciate beauty, to taste it, to feel it, to experience what it feels like to feel. Waiting is the hardest part. Not because I am not patient. I can wait as long as you ask. Waiting is unbearable because time is short, precious, and we waste it in games, in laziness, in being unsure, we all ask for time and all the while, like water through our fingers, time slips by.

We are only alive because we can feel; because we can smell the flowers, because we can feel the water, because we can taste the sweetness of each other, because we can hear music. Nothing exists until we love it. A star is just a distant fire, the moon is just a rock, fountains are just concrete and water. Everything is plain and without reason. They only exist because we see them and are made beautiful when we are moved by them. Never forget that only a heart can bleed.

Ramblings

I died today. In a bed, alone, watching my ceiling, white. No blue sky, or a blanket of stars. No dreamy clouds or bright sunshine. Just a white ceiling. Comfortable, slowly slipping away. Like the tearing of a shroud from a rose bush, tangled up in the thorns. A trickle of blood weaving down the stem, dancing around, feeding the roots, the petals shine more red than before. A white stained by love, and yet loving from here alone. Seeing you against the white canvas I look up to, without raising a brush, I paint you with my eyes, against what I have left. No strength at all, but my mind still enough, to paint you in the last, that my final memories, should be a photograph of longing.

They will scrub it clean long before you see. All the better, for today we fear love in all its forms. Play the game, lust, we all long for companionship, all fear being by alone, but not for the sake of love. Lying with virgins I am unable to touch, I keep looking your way, and find my soul tangled in your long black hairs. A mad man, let madness seep in, what sanity do lovers need? Drink of each other, I’ll pour my soul into your vessel, inside you we swim as one. I leave myself behind, though I have yet to know you; the seeds of love are carried by the bees of song. I see my words nestle between your petals, and taste your bud when I close my eyes. Such a feeling it is to love. Sitting here watching the sun sheathed by the clouds of separation, yet lightening won’t strike. What would it feel like to touch my love, despite myself, beside myself, who can I be but myself?