Crestfallen On The Landing

There used to be a time when I could write of magic, and kindness, and faith. I made an effort to identify my bliss, if not chase it, and look to the future with hope in my heart and dreams in my eyes. I miss that. Going back to that version, or building a new one, even, will take conscious action. I most certainly intend on trying. Not today, though. Today, I broke a heart.

Somebody once said, if you are ever in love with two different individuals, choose the second. Because you never would've fallen for them, had you truly loved the first one. I was in agreement with this school of thought for the longest time. If anything, I might have been a step further, since I believed that love, real love, only finds you but once in life. Everything else can be passed off as a transient, insignificant spark that arises from our primal instincts.

But, as it always happens in the movies, the protagonist's (or antagonist?) most dearly held notion was shattered. By none other than the person they claimed to despise most throughout their life. You know that feeling, when you're on a platform, and a fast train races by? It knocks the wind out of you, and it stirs you back to life when you expect stagnation. That's what it felt like, my second rendezvous with love. It brought me promise when I needed reassurances, and it taught me trust, when I had all but given up. It came to me like celestial intervention, and it shone a light on everything good that I had forgotten about.

Do you sense the but? There shouldn't be one, by any rational measure. If only the human mind could purely function on rationales. In a sonnet, Neruda wrote, I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you, my heart moves from the cold into the fire. In this part of the story I am the one who dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, because I love you. Love, in fire and in blood. My unremarkable mind cannot come up with a better string of words to expound why one would walk away from, well, what I walked away from.

It is difficult to be grateful for the abundance of love I have received in life. It was taken away too quickly, and when given back, only in bits and pieces. I suppose, as beautiful as the sky may be, it will always be tragic. A graveyard of stars - beauty and burn intertwined in sweet agony.