James
An image of you. A scarlet stone reflecting something that I cannot see. And I carry that around. I see you. You and your face are no longer one and the same, no longer and especially not inside my mind.
James, your face I see even when I want not to and, about that, I can’t help but reflect. What is it? Why is it, then, than it is with you and so with your face? What can it have? Who can you be?
I hear you sing and speak to me as if you were perpetually there, hidden deep and into the trees that listen and warn of the sounds which I may cause upon my walking, and so you know, and then I know you know when, as some dark and forbidden magic, I listen to your sounds again. They tell me things; you tell me things and, without agency at that point, I listen and follow. Follow you where? And, do I control you? You live inside of me just as much as you might happen to do so outside but, this time, you do exist, James, and in that you’re much bigger. You move in the world of atoms just as much as in the world of thought, propelled as a single instance.
I do not want to say the words, but I feel them, James. Those words that as forbidden as they may feel to me now are repeatedly denigrated by their overuse. Some time, I must admit, I did use them just as I now know one shall not yet, they do weight into my brain and into my soul.
And precisely that, weight is. It weights, James, your image, your reflection, and the thought of you. Strong representations that, in their not existence move things. I have known of a few things that have so much impact in the physical world around me as the mere thoughts of yourself. What is a self, then, but what happens in the world only and only for the sake or cause of such self? In my opinion, nothing. Then, you, James, are huge, and your very self transcends into the skies dwarfing most of what has come before you. The universe is not but my universe, and I chose, James, that you play an integral role. I forgive you for that but I couldn’t have been so indulgent of the pervasiveness with which you have done so. Why? I want to feel it but I wish I didn’t. You move things and things get moved because of you and I, in the center of it, can’t help but just be.
Your image is deep, James, and it moves, and speaks, and shouts, and cries, and so I do. It accompanies me and gives a sense of belonging. I have never known home but, with you, I do feel, to some extent at least, that such a place exists, and for that I thank you. I will say the words now. And I do very much. I love you, James, and I now that is strong and bold and perhaps not thought but, then did we ever pretend that love is something that should be thought about. One thinks thoughts, but love is not a thought; love one feels and, notwithstanding the lack of points of comparison, I do happen to deeply feel something that I might call love. Why do I take such a liberty? Because I can and I feel and, if be it just for this moments and all that arise upon your image, I can dispense of thought just as much as I can dispense of all that is not you when I am with you. I don’t know who I am, James, and I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what love is but, I don’t need to.
I close my eyes and the world spins, heroically, and then I know I will be fine. This is, albeit mundane, I feeling I truly never allowed myself to feel, quite possibly because, simply put, I never had anyone to feel this with.
Arsenic. Ropes. Pills. Blades. 5-story buildings. All symbols of the same: self inflicted death. That has arisen in my mind right now and I can’t stop but think that it is fine. Death is just life without the delusion. Cold? Perhaps death is so, but so is life sometimes. I see death, James and, for the first time, no mystery lies beyond the door of the last heartbeat. And especially now that death appears friendly and real, I do not want to die, James. Life, darling, is the exception and, with it and you, it is all exceptional.
I keep seeing you as I write these words and I can’t care about the future or past. It doesn’t exist yet for the one and it doesn’t exist any longer for the other. But I do, just now, and you also do, just now.
It was once that it all made sense. It doesn’t now but, quite more powerfully, I now see it doesn’t have to.
The song of a crying mockingbird.
