To assure the solemn, then begin to reassure that one in those depths.
Assuming first that a man here is not crying because of the weather, as no dark clouds exist within the sapphire-blue skies. Omit then that they could have been the culprit to his mood. If the sun is great and bright, then he cries out of an unseen kind of melancholy. There is a glint to his eyes, with a subtle tremor to his voice where no words spill from. He appears wanting to know. His eyes are aiming in directions to look. There is certainty to find.
He is looking at what is before him, though an adjustment to the direction of his head is sent to a different angle. It is the approach of leaves being guided by the occasional draft. What directions are there to keep focus? Is anyone meant to know? Misunderstand him, then assure him. Understand him if anyone can, then reassure him. Melancholy looks all the same. A dark smoke above a fire that states that life wants relief, and to then fade.
There are sounds, besides the wind or the frequent chirping of birds. Footsteps. It is footsteps that reach his ears.
Footsteps that do not make him turn around. Only the wind reaches him, even if they would carry the noise.
It might be evident that this man is ignoring basic and fundamental simplicity. If so, then the world around him is not dark. This man merely conceals the light with the uncertainty in his grimacing features, translating that to confusion. If the world was not oblivious, we would see his hands connecting with his face, disconnecting himself from the light upon the world. The sun, the life’s warmth is withdrawn from, letting tears leak between his fingers.
A reminder is the footsteps. At a healthy distance, not a dangerous one. Footsteps, light in pace, not loosening creaks to the air nor creating other prolonged sounds in the floorboards of the porch beneath them. It is the singular sound, for the meanwhile, until as the remaining drops of morning dew might land to grass blades, a pair of moistened lips open to utter speech. Words are approaching as the footsteps did, with the wind to guide them.
His form begins to quiver to become the newest leaf to run across the wooden surface under his feet. He would crumble, were those words not gentle, “You want to know what I think?” said the voice, continuing with, “I think you are much too sad to notice our happiness.”
Not dropping himself with the autumn surroundings, to then become a lower state to the voice’s own; since it is, with appearance to his jaws and lips, a hideous grating against his ears. His face is not turning at even one degree of an angle, not declining one degree above its ascension to the emotion of anger. It is his face, becoming smoke. His veins seem to boil in clenched hands. Once the somber complexion, now the fumes. If from fire to smoke, he will want to fade from moment to moment, then freeze into stagnant memory.
The voice draws closer. “You want to understand what you think,” it states, confirming with, “I do not ask those words. I know them. It is you who wants to know what everything is for,” ending for a nude, vulnerable moment, seeming to entertain the man’s blind trust to the voice. To do that, it draws closer. When it resumes, it says, “I do like it when you look away. Here I am, always ready to die in your arms for another time.”
Another time, with another memory. To the voice, accompanying an unseen face he seems unable to stray from and break himself for.
Details will explain the origin of a sickness, being one that stays for connection’s sake. Details such as scars or the quantity of what is lost, being recreated into the same number of symptoms. A pill will not cure it. A bullet will not challenge it. Further reverie will only relive the sensations. He is only a footstep apart from this Hell. No haunt can fade as autumn fog or summer bonfire smoke. It returns to leave another scar. One that sends forth the waves out of his chest, bringing out the madness running with every droplet of a tear from somber storms.
The voice continues.
“Are you always this soon to not pay attention?” it said, pausing to allow the man a breath, “you ignore all that I tell you. Even then, you do it, anyway.” Growing somewhat louder and continuing with, “you always tell me to stop knowing you, to not see through what you view. You want me to part from the memorable pictures and the small moments of pleasure ever gained by yourself.”
He does not respond, then he does, “I have a light. I have a path. I do not always need you to direct me.”
Louder to his ear, the voice responds, “you do need me. You are the infant that cries. You need my comfort and direction. Here I am, once again during your petulance, to provide it.”
Choosing to not respond, then going ahead with, “what am I in love with?”
“It is me. Why aren’t you happy with me?” responds and asks the voice.
We have seen him weep without the mood of the weather.
He cries without love, without the presence of something real. Something real, as love, as the stirring emotions that would cause the tears, on occasion, to flow. Conflict should be a part of any relationship. Beauty is meant to be a fixation on pain.
All vulnerable clashes with ourselves. Walking through our mind, healing while broken.
Pain fades, with the clouds, with the smoke, with the leaves.
Or it is pain that is relieved for a moment, a second for escapism’s sake.
The man throws his hand in the direction of the voice.
A vase that stands on a nearby table is knocked to the porch’s wooden boards. It shatters to a thousand brokenhearted pieces. All we can make from the wincing in his cheeks and jaws from fright or additional tension is how the pieces compare in an identical fashion. He looks upon the shattered vase, seeing what is broken, though the continuation to the view is evidence enough for what has been repaired.
A voice and no form to unveil it. What had he heard?
One short trek back into his abode is enough to determine all monochrome reality with a single portrait of a beautiful woman. Through gloss and brush stroke, it appears as if painted with tear stains.
Modern Romanticism 