What should have been, and what was.
The echoes of her laugh rang faint like tolls across a valley deep, a clarion call that had not been warm for time out of mind.
Each reflection, faint may be, strikes my soul with the force of a hammer on anvil. Each strike, the soul protests,
must surely be the last, for how much more can one soul shatter? Each crack, like the keening, weeping cries of hidaad, sets grief
aflight to settle like dust in dim sepulchres. Her smile, once the crowning sunrise in the passing of my days, turned to light the
soul of another to glory. I am humbled once more, to recognize that for a time I was the most fortunate man that had e'er drawn breath.
Secrets, once warm and deep, turned cold and sharp, rolled across her face like thunderclouds of anger and pain racing above a plain
now barren of love and joy. The flush of her cheek as she contemplates her paramour speak volumes, in a tome now closed to me.
The lack of her presence in my life has moved me to grief, the hole left gaping a void so vast that I found no trace of myself left in it.
My peace, once held in the sure knowledge of her love, turned back to chaos as I find that without forming in a sea of love already truly
deep and fulfilling, this sea was one that she could not navigate, and had to swim for the shallow depths of shore. Our choices, no easy
thing to make in a life shared with another, led me to a depth in that sea so dark that even her light could not reach me. What was once
an oasis turned to desert, as time and pain and tears and change pressed hard against the soul that once she was
Her changes chart a course for her soul that shared no warning, betrayed no hint of the danger moving swift, like the current of a river
placid seeming on the surface, moving deep and powerfully beneath. To know that love so deep was gifted to me once and lost by the folly
of our hubris is to know that fate is fickle, and that none who ever think to find themselves truly deserving understand the price of
devotion so focused. The ghost of her touch still caresses my cheek, wiping away the tears of our last parting, reducing me to the boy who
had once hoped to be loved by someone so wonderful, and was, before the parting of our soul paths. My soul, now wounded with a grief so deep
that none before it seem to compare, longs for the warmth of the sun that was her love. Joy, once a stalwart and steadfast companion, seems
to be elusive as I move through days alone.
Yet days once passed like held breaths begin to decompress as the truth of her parting strikes my soul. My fortune, once thought to be in her
love, seems now to be in the knowledge that I am full of love. That I could love so deeply, that I could share so much, that I could feel so
fully, this is to know that I am a being of love, and not one solely built of grief. No longer waiting for permission to be, my soul knits slowly
like mending bone, each day a new discovery in waiting. Life is the passing of many moments unmeasured, strung together by exclamations of our joy,
the realization that love is where we find it. By looking in the face of each passing stranger, the eyes like windows peering back into our own soul,
we can find love where it always was. Love lives in my soul, and happiness a choice that, while not always one of ease, proves surely to be worth
more than that of willing despair. To live. To love. To hope. This is where the soul is meant to be. This is what joy is.
Each reflection, faint may be, strikes my soul with the force of a hammer on anvil. Each strike, the soul protests,
must surely be the last, for how much more can one soul shatter? Each crack, like the keening, weeping cries of hidaad, sets grief
aflight to settle like dust in dim sepulchres. Her smile, once the crowning sunrise in the passing of my days, turned to light the
soul of another to glory. I am humbled once more, to recognize that for a time I was the most fortunate man that had e'er drawn breath.
Secrets, once warm and deep, turned cold and sharp, rolled across her face like thunderclouds of anger and pain racing above a plain
now barren of love and joy. The flush of her cheek as she contemplates her paramour speak volumes, in a tome now closed to me.
The lack of her presence in my life has moved me to grief, the hole left gaping a void so vast that I found no trace of myself left in it.
My peace, once held in the sure knowledge of her love, turned back to chaos as I find that without forming in a sea of love already truly
deep and fulfilling, this sea was one that she could not navigate, and had to swim for the shallow depths of shore. Our choices, no easy
thing to make in a life shared with another, led me to a depth in that sea so dark that even her light could not reach me. What was once
an oasis turned to desert, as time and pain and tears and change pressed hard against the soul that once she was
Her changes chart a course for her soul that shared no warning, betrayed no hint of the danger moving swift, like the current of a river
placid seeming on the surface, moving deep and powerfully beneath. To know that love so deep was gifted to me once and lost by the folly
of our hubris is to know that fate is fickle, and that none who ever think to find themselves truly deserving understand the price of
devotion so focused. The ghost of her touch still caresses my cheek, wiping away the tears of our last parting, reducing me to the boy who
had once hoped to be loved by someone so wonderful, and was, before the parting of our soul paths. My soul, now wounded with a grief so deep
that none before it seem to compare, longs for the warmth of the sun that was her love. Joy, once a stalwart and steadfast companion, seems
to be elusive as I move through days alone.
Yet days once passed like held breaths begin to decompress as the truth of her parting strikes my soul. My fortune, once thought to be in her
love, seems now to be in the knowledge that I am full of love. That I could love so deeply, that I could share so much, that I could feel so
fully, this is to know that I am a being of love, and not one solely built of grief. No longer waiting for permission to be, my soul knits slowly
like mending bone, each day a new discovery in waiting. Life is the passing of many moments unmeasured, strung together by exclamations of our joy,
the realization that love is where we find it. By looking in the face of each passing stranger, the eyes like windows peering back into our own soul,
we can find love where it always was. Love lives in my soul, and happiness a choice that, while not always one of ease, proves surely to be worth
more than that of willing despair. To live. To love. To hope. This is where the soul is meant to be. This is what joy is.