But the ice melts and the flowers die.
We hunt the night for prey that satisfies our peculiar appetites. Individualistic and unique, while at the same time being the same as everyone else, we are creatures of instinct, with absolute dominion over our will and absolutely no control over who we love. We know we're not alone, sitting across each other in cafés, lying beside each other on our beds, walking alongside each other down paved streets. We know we're not special either, taking steps to bring ourselves down from the pedestals we build for ourselves, hoping someone would look up to you again, hoping someone would lift you up and put you there again. The driving force that pushes you to go and hunt that which you crave is not the craving itself. but the need to feel important, to feel treasured like that first crush of yours, all those years ago. Maybe it might drive you to greater heights, or to the edge of a cliff.
What am I saying?
My heart races this slow, painful night, with me hoping that it rains like the lakes of heaven just overflowed. You wish the best things in life stopped passing you by long enough to let you jump on the wagon and see where it takes you, but it just doesn't work that way. The grass is always greener on the other side, your mind is a torture rack on wheels with pictures of those people you can't help but love, chasing you down everytime you think you can walk away from the pain. Then you finally land your mind on that one person that puts your puzzle pieces together without even trying, and they don't think it's all that special. Not their fault, of course, maybe they've seen the world more than you have, lost more than you may have had, given more than you'll ever have. Not your fault either, maybe you've seen more in them than they've known, felt more than they may have known, cried more than they'll ever know. We're all different, yet we're all the same, aren't we?
Then you move on.
You admit to yourself that they may never see you the same way you see them, which is honestly one of the hardest things you'll ever do, maybe because your mind fights to not agree. Thoughts flit across your haphazard plain of consciousness, trying to take hold, trying to find water beneath the mirages, trying to find sunlight in dark caverns. She was always the brightest star in my current hemisphere, this atmosphere that I found myself in for now. Walk into a room, she sets it on fire as everyone burns in her glorious existence. Blooms like a flower in spring even in the acrid, polluted soils of society, she brings nothing but joy to the depressed, certainty to the unsure, hope to the desperate, healing to the broken; and all she has to do is smile. I ask her how she finds all her positivity, and she smiles yet again. Magic of the highest degree.
That's when I saw the flower wilt just a little.
Months have passed, bridges crossed and lands have been mapped and I find myself wondering again. I am a believer in her magic, a faith born out of months of being in awe at her certainty in life, and maybe it's my perseverance that leads me here. When she finally told me the smile that she wears was doesn't always stay, I saw something new. I pressed some more, asked her why she never lets herself become vulnerable, never lets anyone beyond the closed doors of her intimacy, and she told me why. She asked me, why should I?
I swear I had answers, but not for her question. I had answers for questions I had about her.
Somethings last as long as you want it to, I tell her. To me, she became one of my favourite muses, a source of both reality and poetry, grounding me when I might drift, lifting me when all I wanted to do was sink. I saw her as that titan that held the sky, unwavering and unreal, as she made me think there was nothing in the world we needed to despair over, just trudge on things would be better. Don't we all need that kind of reassurance in our lives? But sometimes when we find that person who can show it to us, we wonder at their humanity, at their vulnerability, at what makes them cry or despair. She never showed hers, and most men fight themselves to the death on the ramparts of her mind trying in vain to find out more, walls which I've once tried to climb until I found my niche in the bailey. I was still not in the keep, that which housed her heart, her hopes and her fears, and I was content to wait and worship.
And then I delved in.
And then what? What would we be in a few years? She was smiling, albeit weakly and with frustration, but I started to see beyond her porcelain mask of surety and strength, a face of... yearning? I pressed some more, hoping to get beyond that moat of crocodiles that kept her skepticism fed, my curiosity starving and my intentions only to find meaning in existence. She didn't want to believe what I was trying to say, she didn't want to believe beyond her horizon, and then she tells me, after an hour of soul-searching, watching cat videos and talking about past haunts and ghostly decisions, her horizon was always bleak.
She had cried her last tears years ago.
She fought against belief, the belief that put the million people in the sand, the belief that made fools fly and wise men die alone. The belief that made her wish for a prince to sweep her off her feet, the belief that made her cry when they told her those were all dreams, those were all wishful thoughts. She watched, with pity and envy, the rest of the world as we dreamed on, pity because she knew what we would soon know, envy because the ignorant bliss we found ourselves in was a sweet serenity, albeit temporary. My mission was to not prove her wrong but to give her hope again, and try I did, for a few more hours, in simple gestures, in confessions of hope and in admissions of love.
What is this all going to be then? she asked, just a slight hoping in her voice.
I knew at that moment, that I have reached that Holy Grail other men have fought to find, only to give up and go. Men she's seen try to win her heart but she wouldn't let them, for God sake she's not a prize to win! Yet the fools and wise men alike move on, knowing that she was not going to be the one that put them on the pedestal they made for themselves. They left her, cementing her belief that nothing in life was going to last anyway, and knowing this killed me inside every time, yet I persevere. Not in hopes she'd look at me the same way, but in hopes that one day she would learn to dream again. She saw herself as ice; hard, cold, and clear of intentions. She hated the idea of flowers, as they could wilt a week after she got them, implying that such a symbol of love can die as love dies too. She wanted to be an image of consistency, an image of unwavering existence, but hard as she might try to deny it,
The ice melts and the flowers die.
Do I have answers for her questions? Maybe, but it's going to take me a lifetime to prove them.
We hunt the night for prey that satisfies our peculiar appetites. Individualistic and unique, while at the same time being the same as everyone else, we are creatures of instinct, with absolute dominion over our will and absolutely no control over who we love. We know we're not alone, sitting across each other in cafés, lying beside each other on our beds, walking alongside each other down paved streets. Just know that you'll never be alone, was all I could say to her.
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For you, and you know it.