Curtain Calls

They say that timing is everything. And here we are. Everything feels right but the time. You’re not mine. You can’t be. Save for those precious moments before that door opens and you have to leave. I lay back and my hopes dissipate against the ceiling like the cigarette smoke escaping my lips.

 Sometimes even as I hold you I feel the moments slip away until we put on our friendly masks and play our daily roles. Roles we cast off in passion and tenderness; behind shades and scrims; curtains and closed doors. Where you fall into me and I fall into a field of down that feels like home. Like your skin against mine. Like looking in your eyes and knowing you believe in me.

 And I just want to hold you a moment longer, trail my fingers along your back. Feel your cheek against mine. Tangle our limbs and fall asleep until we lose where you end and I begin.

But we can’t stay in this green room forever. Eventually, every time, we must take the stage again, and play these roles we’ve chosen. And we glance across the room with the vague imaginings of another play upon this stage. Different costumes, different steps, different masks, but your hand in mine in the final act.

Cricket

I love Christmas. I start planning Christmas in the summer. It’s a holiday full of joy, wonder and companionship to me. For all of the souls I share it with and all of the fond memories I have of it, there are traces that will ever remind me of you.

Holding you on the couch as we watched the snow fall. Opening presents with your family. Waking up to breakfast, your framed eggs. Me trying and failing to make breakfast for you, and you trying my cheese covered egg globs anyway.

My shoulder wet with tears at the thoughts of your departed father.

I still remember my brother’s wedding. I smiled as they announced the father/daughter dance. I admired the sweetness of fathers taking their little girls of all ages onto the dance floor. I watched as my new sister in law danced with her father.

Then I remembered. I turned to see your eyes brim with tears. Wordless, I took your hand and we walked to the parking lot. You emptied your tears upon me as I held your shaking body. You apologized for taking me away from the reception. Your thoughtfulness was boundless, even at your worst.

I told you there was nowhere else I would rather be, and that was the truth. It still is.

Had I only known how dear this all was. But I did not yet understand the face of the demon called Depression and of all it cost me, you were the steepest price. Countless times I would have traded the life I gained on the other side to have you back again.

My friends back there tell me how they wish they could have my life. And backstage, on tour, on set; I dream of a simple life in a small town with you.

You’re having a child now. A child you told me you never wanted. With a new husband I wish was me. How things change…

In the still of night it’s the little things. Your presence next to me, your tender sleeping visage, and the way you would rub your feet together to fall asleep. Like a beautiful cricket.

And the night song returns the lump in my throat. I swallow hard all the regret that’s brought me here without you. Their serenade echoing in the starlight, a requiem for another life I might have lived.

Hyde

Sometimes flames can burn too bright.

And singe us both with its wicked dance.

My Sonata in the Moonlight. Byron's poems brought to life. Such mystery in your eyes, such desperation in your love. Like moments were forever fleeting and we might never make love again one day. Your tears upon my shoulder, of passion, of sadness you could not explain; of that endless understanding that today's splendour would one day be gone.

And it so overwhelmed you that you mourned that eventuality even in the moment of joy. Your turbulent song of joy and sorrow. A ballad we would sing together as you taught me its melody. But we never found harmony...

Our yearning ballad; ever waxing, ever waning. Like the moonlight that bathed our bodies.

As the nights quickly ticked away. There was wisdom in your prophecy. For all must wane and fade away. So too did we.

Burning passion, clinging desperately against inevitable tomorrow. Where our love is but a history, dancing in and out of the flickering projector reel in our minds.

I could not heal the darkness in your soul or ease your suffering. I could not help you find a calm in the storm. And eventually you no longer let me try.

I remember you vanishing. A ghost in the wind. Me holding the fading embers in my shaking hands.

Me writing letters to shadows that would never reply. Left with only a picture and a half burnt candle to remind you were here once. A weeping angel that did not take me with you.

Wake

Waking to the rain beading outside the window, a bleeding ghost against the mist of dreams. I exhale upon the pane.

The pain.

Tear drops fall staccato upon this canvas of blurring lines I can no longer see. But I keep pressing pen to page in crimson ink because I cannot exorcise the way you still haunt me.

The dissonant wind chime breathes your parting whispers and every secret I’ll never know. Buried in those deep blue eyes, six feet underground.

My sobs choke as I place my hands upon this Earth that you’ve departed.

I awake, shaking and cold, every tear a silent prayer that you’ve awoken somewhere better than here. Than this place that hurt you and drove you away.

And the slow motion image of disjointed dream I where I see the flash before you departed and lament that you were all alone in the end and that I didn’t even know. 

I missed your wake. Please don't let this be awake...

I go to this place to grieve and beg forgiveness for leaving you alone. Because I don’t know where you’re buried. I didn’t even know you were gone.

Suspicious glances when I asked for you. Some sadistic joke? Or does he really not know? The bottom falling out of my chest as the tale unfolded before me. They didn’t know where you rested either, only that you were gone.

Left in the wake of sinking confusion and endless questions that will never be answered. And guilt that pulls with hooks from the bottom of my heart.

And the fraying projector reel plays on loop. The fractured images of you here, not here, leaving, gone. 

And I wake.