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Letting Go |
| Written by J. Brown | |
| Saturday, 12 April 2008 | |
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Share it:      The night was crystal clear, perfect. The moon was full, looking down upon him and laughing, but for once the laughter didn't faze him in the slightest. He was sad, but content. He lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke into the frigid air, watching the exhale trial away intact as it could only do on a frigid, windless night like this, the plume slowly drifting off to vanish into the darkness of the shadows cast by the fir trees that ringed the yard he was standing in outside his home. A million stars watched him, waiting for the drama to play out, but tonight he was going to disappoint them all.
His mind played over the phone conversation that he'd just hung up from, his heart heavy unto bursting with emotion from it. She had been perfect, she really had. His mind played him dreams of a life with her, fantasies of happy times, and laughter, and shared moments of wonder at what could have been had things worked out. He relished them, savored them like a connoisseur would savor a fine wine. She'd really been prefect, his ideal woman, and she had had no small amount of feeling for him, he was sure. The conversation, their first, had lasted for two hours, and they'd talked about expectations, music, the future, their dreams. She was destined to change the world, her heart was that strong, that noble, that tenacious. When he thought of her, he could only imagine greatness in her future. She was limitless, perfect. He took another drag off his cigarette, the second plume of exhale just as hearty as the first, drifting away in the same shape that it had erupted from his lungs, and with it, a single tear rolled out of his eye and down his face. He would have wiped it away, but he felt as though he'd earned it, and he let it finish its journey down his check into his beard, where it was lost.
They'd met online more than a year before, and he'd been instantly amazed by her. Her will to do good, to force the world into her ideal instead of giving up so much as an inch of ground. None of her plans were mortal, all were as though conceived by the gods, and she was more a force of nature than a woman, all fire and passion and uncompromising drive. Something about her rubbed off on him, from the first time that they'd written back and forth. She had changed him, what he saw, what he felt, how he thought about things and considered his life. She had no idea the effect that she'd had on him, what a bolt of lightning she'd been to him. She'd been an epiphany born to flesh, if only to him. And he had fallen for her, his heart as uncompromising as her own. There had been thousands of notes back and forth, and then letters of increasing length, and flirtations, and then more serious musings about the future. For the first time in his life, he'd felt complete, whole, his previously shattered heart a miracle of efficiency, her face always in his thoughts. Her ambition was his hero, wiping out years of jaded survival that he'd endured and replacing it with life instead. Pure, sweet, victorious life.
He took another drag off the cigarette, enjoying the feel of the smoke in his lungs, holding it for an extra second in the cold before letting it free to float away into the night after its brothers. No tear escorted it this time, he was already done crying over it. Love was powerful, and joyous, and he still had faith in her, still knew that she was going to change the world. The phone conversation had been glorious, after all the writing back and forth, finally her voice poured into his ear like heroine into an addict's vein, her laughter a melody to rival any angel's harp to him. His heart had pounded in his chest as though it were going to bust out and take off across the floor by itself, going to look for her of its own accord. He'd been absolutely giddy with the feeling, his brain firing every endorphin it could produce into him. Listening to her, he could have walked through walls, picked up cars, done unthinkable things, all because of the power that she bestowed upon him, unknowing, not trying. Just by the very fact of her being. He felt as though he were in the very light of God himself.
And then, of course, the hammer had fallen. She'd told him that she was easily bored, and couldn't bring herself to settle, that her heart was a vagrant, restless. And he'd known then that there was no chance for them, that he was a settled soul with nothing to offer someone who was restless. And he'd done his best to hide the damage that he'd allowed himself to inflict upon his own heart with his fantasies, he'd told her that he was tired and had to go to bed, but she'd known, it had been heavy in her voice, and they had both known. They'd promised to speak soon, and maybe they would, but everything had come down around his ears in that brief moment on time, like an avalanche swallowing the side of the mountain all the way to the valley, it had come.
The man took the last hit off his cigarette, looking at it, only it was blurred and out of focus. He blinked in surprise, and found to his surprise that the tears were still coming, apparently he wasn't done crying after all. He took one lat look at the moon, fat and happy and bloated and shining and beautiful in the night sky. Then he turned back to his house, walking to the ashtray that sat outside his door. He stubbed out his cigarette, and with it his dreams, and went back inside to his bed, and the only life that he'd ever known. Copyright 2008 J. Brown |
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