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A Confession; A Eulogy; A Plea
Today, I grieve.
For I have lost one of my best friends and greatest lovers.
We met when I was high on life. I was high on myself in all the beautiful arrogance of youth. She was cunning and we matched each other, wit for wit.
She reminded me of someone I once knew years ago; but of course I never told her that.
We talked for hours.
We instinctively knew what the other needed. We would spout poetry or spend long moments in the silence of understanding.
We were lovers for a time.
I could bring the sweetest moans out of her, and she would make me forget to breathe.
It was so right.
It was perfect.
It was doomed.
She would be gone more and more often, each time longer than the last.
I would pass the time huddled in upon myself in some isolated corner of my fear.
I felt withdrawals from my addiction to her and took it out on all those I loved.
Foolishly, I found a way to blame her; resentment was born.
As with any addiction, I spiraled downwards.
During the brief times I had the joy of seeing her, I was spiteful and my words bore venom intended to paralyze the heart.
Though whose heart – hers or mine – is still unclear.
I regretted that malicious poison the moment I used it.
Yet, I could not bring myself to ask my heart to forgive me, much less hers.
She began to avoid me, and I cannot blame her. It came to be that my very soul ached for sight of her.
Her eyes were my favourite drink; her laugh chased away the clouds.
Her touch shattered the icy sheathe of my heart and awakened the child within me to a joyous music all at once.
Yes… touch was the best.
The less I saw her, the more frantic my desire and the more barbed my welcomes became. She paraded through my thoughts constantly.
I saw her everywhere.
I saw her with everyone.
Ever haunted by my thoughts of her and the jealousy they irrationally provoked, I hardened.
Let us keep in mind the difference between what is hard and what is strong – for strong, I was not.
The difference is alchemical. It is in the structure of a thing.
What is merely hard can be made to shatter. What is strong will endure.
An oak tree may be hard, but it will snap in a strong wind; whereas the stronger grasses will merely bend and persevere.
I was not strong; I was hard. I shattered.
Soon it was that I found myself covered in my own guilt, a shard of my shattered self in my hand, the body of my lover laying below me staining those grasses that would endure far longer than I.
So I now confess to you and to myself. In a self-destructive implosion, I killed my
best friend, my lover, my Hope.
I would beg her forgiveness here at her tomb, but I know she has already granted it.
For I have seen her before.
Indeed, we have met many times.
I have met her in a shameless rendezvous over and over: in the orchestra in middle school, after finding that money inside a dumpster, reflected in the eyes of countless lovers, buried in between the lines of the most beautiful prose.
Now I stand here older, wiser, stronger, but still too hard to bend to the gales that chase her in their own fits of jealous rage.
I know she’ll be back, but even so, her loss is momentous, and, as always, came when I needed her most.
I still talk to her sister every now and then. Faith and I keep in touch.
But now I share a room with Loneliness, and she really doesn’t talk much.
Should any of you see Hope, tell her I await her return and that I have not changed, but I am ready to learn. Tell her to have hope for me…....
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This is original work by the author. Original Copyright 2010 Viktoria Troy Fox
- Genre
- Poetry Reading