Head on the pillow. Her head in his arms, here daydreaming of the days when he would do that.
When he would hold her, the rain fell upwards from her eyes. When he would hold her, the stars were only ever beneath herself. Far beneath, she had been held, as she now is stretched across a bed as though painted of the longest streak. Far above, he had and still does look down upon her, though now of all days, his rain is coming to caress her cheeks. His rain is coming to find her upon the dry earth, when she should take to her passing.
As all I have is you, aching in this heart that twists in its knotting veins and arteries, you still exist without wanting to go. Such embracing thoughts. From the mind to her mouth, she says, “Where are you, now? In Heaven, with the stars, with other faces you are happy with? My love, are you somewhere comfortable?”
I used to be somewhere comfortable.
I used to be somewhere I thought was a slice of Heaven. It was you, as it is still you, driving rain into me from within this beating heart.
She raises herself, like a corpse becoming awakened, from the bed where she is sprawled. Like a pencil that has written multiple verse, she was loose to the sounds of repetition to her sighs, to her whimpers and cries, to the scars that are invisible to anyone’s sight except for hers.
At the minute of raising herself, the sunlight from a nearby window intrudes in from behind a cloud to ignite the blonde locks of hers with a youthful radiance. It is bright in the apparent sheen, while warmth crosses her cheeks in a charming blush. Even then, the evidence of somberness in her open expression bandages the young appearance of hers back into monochrome.
She lowers herself back to the bedsheets, as a corpse that, within its casket, is brought low to the modesty of welcoming death.
Shadows crawl over her in the same speed and motion as silent and relaxed infants. It is when she lays down, again, that this woman appears to fossilize herself for someone’s accident of discovery. She has laid back down as a worm reaching for the comfort and recognition of the dark.
She won’t be truly dead, not while many things are still alive.
Not while the room chooses shadows, over light, will she be deceased with a halted heartbeat. Right now, she will count the thumps against her chest, replacing the room’s silence with her own lacking orchestra, consisting of just a single percussion’s rhythm. Though, she paces about the reverbs, attempting to draw circles, with her mind’s tracing step, capturing and entrapping the connection of something warm to her. Something that fell as the one leaf that was watched to descend from its bough. While the memory of a man’s death is recalled, it is this woman’s tears that fall faster.
Her eyes are the sight to pain that erases the walls, the paint that to its color, is nothing compared to white. A nothingness, when compared to the blankness. She sheds a few teardrops, at her mercy, to the bedsheets beneath her, calling out in question, “What color are the clouds, truly?”
Then, she says with a segment of a specific history to her speech, “When he left, when you left, when my love left, there was a time when I wanted that, earlier. There were words that I spoke, at the desire for that. These were words that were turned around, as if they were a door wanted to be opened from the wrong way. You pulled, as I pushed. My trust would not open itself, at first. Then, you were allowed to enter.”
Your entrance was also your exit. Why were you so reluctant to leave, at that time? You had your chance. I was to be happy for it.
Then, you leave. Then, you died. You died when you left, at the same time as both occurred. Your exit was when I let you go, though now I can’t, because you still won’t allow me to let you go.
She says, “When is the last star in the universe going to fade? Will I then be left to this eternal loneliness, even without your memory? I don’t want that. I still want you, though I still don’t want you. I am a conflict, but I won’t reach the climax point of this story. I will set myself down to the stones, puddles, and bare earth with all the petals that fall from their twigs, in springtime. Why should I keep writing this depiction of myself on this ceiling, above me? Won’t I be scrubbed away into filthy dark?”
Her head tilts to its right side, observing the outdoors from an ajar window, though all she notices is the sky with the tops of extending towers and other houses. She had not noticed it, but now the sunshine is gone. Along with the light in her heart, remaining in there nothing but an ocean of its depth in memories, the sunshine is gone.
A singular, silver tear creeps itself on a lone sprawl free from her right eye. It finds its way to her cheek, and like gravity that takes all the rain to the earth, this one never finds its spot in the ground. It runs over her cheek with the speed of a peddler selling the wares of grief, to soon seep into the fabric of the bedsheets beneath her. Wasted. Needless, as if the sky were to cry out to this bereaving woman, “You are not alone, because with the setting of the sun, the shadows are now yours.”
Was that not what she wanted?
Isn’t this what I wanted?
To want for the stars to disappear, as it does in the skyglow having pushed nighttime radiance somewhere into the conveyor belts of factories that spew lightbulbs. But she cries, with emptiness that fills her heart with further emptiness, in the sighs that escape her lips into the corners of this room, among the shadows that have grown stronger and longer where clothes were tossed, and spiders have nested themselves into a silken home. Of embroidery made from the threads for cocoons, and of the imprisonment that clothes have for the baldness of beautiful flesh, shadows become the quilt that hugs her and ties her down.
One goodbye. One goodbye was all I wanted.
One last farewell is all one wants. Did she receive it? She answers our question with, “You left with too many breaths, in between. You left on the miles to nowhere. I wanted to follow. You told me to stay. And I never caught the words that were under your breath, the ones that kept me in mystery. I cannot blame you, while you are in the dark of this starless night like any other.”
It did not come.
How could it have come, the farewell that might have closed the door that he opened, when she did not mention it in her answer?
My love, you left as I watched all your footsteps walk further from me. Even then, I heard each one as though we were dancing together, under a true starry night, with the ocean under us.
She says, “Your reflection. My own. My reflection. It was your own, in your smile, and I saw you loved me with no conditions attached, while you were allowed entree through to me, to my smile, to my stare.”
When love is true, it reaches the skies to find the stars, and finding them it will, even during a night when all we want to do is grieve in looking down. From diamond to diamond, only one embedded in a circle of gold is needed for a man to step far from his tower, bury himself in the sand where she is, and wrap the imagery of eternity around her third finger on the left hand. There, for a moment in a fruitful kiss, they will swim in the many sunrises, in what will be seen as the singular star that is never to fade, even if night lasts its longest.
Although, while this woman grieves, all she can hear is the hammering against the walls of her heart, as though another prisoner, aside from her in the quilt, is wanting to be broken free. One other prisoner is banging their fists against those walls, maddened at the silence, shouting at the shadows.
A day has ended. Perhaps it will be one of many a lovelorn figure, as hers, will be afflicted by. A waft of an entering gust intrudes upon this scene, mingling with her thoughts, blending in with her sighs. Through such parted lips, she utters the question, “Where did I leave from? There was a funeral I have just returned from; this is right. I have returned from a funeral, as I was dressed in black.” After one more breath with another teardrop added to the collection of those that have seeped into the sheets under her, she returns to her words with, “I was dressed in the color of the earth. He. He was dressed in white. A light, he was, that would not fade, as it still refuses to.”
She sits up, looks at the wall in front of her, to next say, “I am still dressed as that wall, in front of me. I am not able to undress for the night, for what is the use? I will only be dressed in the same nighttime coloring that is all black upon the surface and even blacker beneath it.”
The wall. It is not black of its coloring. It may seem obvious of that detail, as the wall is actually painted to a green coating. An emerald-green coating of paint, applied as though to signal to wanderers or dwellers of this room, in this apartment, of some thought of growth the decider to the color had or even still has.
That wall is naked with nothing upon it. No portrait, dresser, nor even a clock covers any inch of its green hue, now having been overshaded by a blackness due unto the fallen night and sun.
She had returned from a funeral. The funeral that was, and still is, all that matters in this decaying state of herself.
Her eyes looked down to the barren sight of her beloved being lowered into the ground, once the last nail was screwed into the casket. All she saw was another sunset being buried into an ocean of dark earth, at her feet.
Now where she is, in her abode, of an apartment that shows no light, anymore, there is an atmosphere of sadness that lingers. It is as a mist that has entered in from a crisp morning, during springtime’s nestling. A mist that clogs the eyes, though layers itself upon the cheeks. One that blinds, though also irradiates all things that can be seen. A sadness, of both an illumination that means to die when the mist is gone, while also acting as an encroaching shadow that will tell the woman here to say, “There should be more of this familiarity.”
One day has ended. Many tears have fallen, while now this woman lays back down to her head upon the pillow and her thin form creased into the sheets. Her eyes see nothing while she sleeps, as all memories are packed into a disorder inside her mind that cannot quiet itself.
However, the position in which her head has been laid is worth noting.
It has been tilted in the direction of a closet. A wooden barrier, with a doorknob that is turned at an angle of forty degrees from its horizontal position. With that, the door, itself, has been left open, though only at the point of itself nearly closing. It is that the part of the door that opens, when the handle is fully turned, is pushed halfway inside the notch, hence why the doorknob is turned at such an angle. Had this bereaving woman been there to open it, though this can only be understood from the direction her head is in.
We should state, too, that this closet door is opposite from the window. If the woman’s head turned to the other direction, she would, once again, face the window.
Ajar window. Ajar closet door.
In a residence as this one, something enters while something else is meant to exit.
Modern Romanticism 