Saturday, January 7, 2012

A Very, Very Short One: The Youngest of Three


She was my best friend.
The youngest woman of three could never know her love. I watched her pain, witnessed her pine for the counterpart always an inch too far away.  Though she didn’t speak, I saw her lugubrious eyes day to day, and on the last they revealed a bank of secrets. In sweeping sheets of midnight blue, similar to the monsoon of an Arizonian June, those eyes so wretched rained words from their center and sighed:

“Heavy are the beads that ache to detach from me, ache to be liberated from me. They want a motion of spontaneous flight. Spinning on their axes these pear-shaped droplets grow heavier each moment. Filled to capacity by the ages of desire…days, hours, minutes…of fantastical possibility, I am exhausted and broken.”

From my separate space only feet away I watched her crumbling. Her mouth remained still, yet her voluble eyes could not be shielded. She acquiesced, weak yet proud. The thin neck of those droplets snapped, releasing their prisoner toward a ground made of stone. In that moment, the youngest of three forfeited her erring desires towards the earth where they splattered and crossed in tiny moats. In that moment of surrender she exchanged curiosity for reality and thought for sensation. Once again her eyes spoke:

“With only ghosts of memory and skeletons of the future, today I’ve exchange this excessive guessing for simple contentment. No longer do I want you, Love, I want only to be rid of you. The beads have divorced my palms and I’m no longer bound by their invisible pressure. As a result of my own force, I’m a victim no more. My affection does not wane or flex. Rather, it has retarded under gravity’s innocent law and crashed hard below my spirit into glittering faces. Now I watch the faceted liquid evaporate into the soil.
Dear love that I will never know: Our opposite hearts spiral in this quivering honesty. Ultimately, what you do not possess creates the truth that, though for years it has been determined on rising, the fire I tend for you in unrequited. It will never know its place as a phoenix.”

I held my friend as she wept, though we never touched. It felt like years and she quickly put on her sunglasses, afraid to show me her eyes so abashed and transparent. Reluctantly I left her side after she pretended to regain her strength. I promised to return when she needed me and I vowed to see her eyes on the day that they instead beamed fluorescent with love.  But, I didn't. In fact, I never saw that look in her eyes. It never materialized for the heart that pumped her blood failed her night. She was gone from this realm, and has never been resurrected. The purity of her youth was encapsulated in those years and it will never emanate any farther than my saccharine memories.