Years went by without so much as a purr. I found myself wondering where she was, what she was doing, or how happy she was. Time progressed linearly but nothing happened. Idiots still posted stupid things on Facebook, buffoons abruptly became lifelong fans of dead celebrities who got even more famous, and poseurs with bathroom selfies made themselves look like the fumbling clowns they are. People… pardon me, things… never change.

But these are nothing more than thoughts in the ocean of misery… a restful distraction from the truth that I have no idea where to find her. I hallucinate her voice in the lonely cutting winds of our subzero Winter Wonderland. I feel her under my skin where my heart is supposed to be. I see her where my soul presumes to lay dormant in the middle of the ocean of this so-called life. I gaze into her restless hungry eyes clouding my mind. I watch the sunrise dew turn into rain which turns into tears of blood. On a park bench, I wait for the leaves to dry, lose life, and drift through the air, and like me, land in seemingly random places. Then I realize these are the distant dreams of things that’ll never be, hovering in thoughts that’ll never be free, until my mind attempts to escape to the consuming darkness of the day.

I realize I have no choice but to be patient and endure all of these nights without her. She is somehow, always surrounding my dreams, and in them, the moment I reach out to touch her soft, warm face I fall… I awake harshly, suddenly battling chronic insomnia like a zombie, and when I close my eyes, I see her as a solace in perpetual darkness.

Pain is the only constant; the only real thing among elaborate delusions: hope, faith, and even love. It sets in serenely, trying to account for lost time and search for the genuine affection that’s tired of idling inside you for so long. She deserves raindrops coming from clear country skies even if it means I have to dig the earth long after I’ve died; she deserves to have her body covered in gold and light. I sought to rule the land, the world where the constants differ greatly, where hope is king, faith is law, and she, is my queen. There, I could create words that carried meaning instead of a mere syntax conversion during a passing second between lovers, and with them, I’d tell her about those same lovers whose hearts are on fire. I’d tell her the story of this king who died from never having reunited with his queen. Unfortunately, no matter how far I go or how quickly I run, I know truth will find me, I know I eventually couldn’t talk anymore, that my words would inevitably lose meaning, my actions, panache. I’ll be forced to hide and watch her dance and smile in the rain, leave footprints in the sand on the edge of the ocean, and listen to her sing and laugh in the autumn breeze. Until finally, my heart would cease to be, and I’d have nowhere else to run to.

I detach. Walk far. Travel farther. Fight hard, and don’t even know what I’d say if I saw her again. All that remains is the somber sounds emanating from this piano; the Chopin I reluctantly hope she hears. Before her, there was never any light, and now, the darkness grows deeper. But there was, for a moment, something in between in her presence, and that slither of sunlight through her wooden blinds, that… is where I wanted to be.

Springtime of Love; Franz Stuck; 1917 — *Springtime of Love;* Franz Stuck; 1917