Once More With You

The dragon on the carousel is taking me far away, slowly, in small, music movements, to places so sweet and bittersweet, and it won’t stop. So for tonight, just this once, I’ll allow myself to remember her. To remember a time when she loved me. To remember a time when we kissed in front of beautiful sunsets and how she disappeared with it. To a refuge far away from when I began missing her but that refuge doesn’t hold the people who truly care if I live or die. My heart is like this because once, I tasted her love in so many different ways and numerous times, I entertained her fantasy of a post-mortem love.

You used to tell me to take your hand so I would never be lost. That you were all I needed to fight through my sorrows. I believed you. You told me that if I ever become overwhelmed with suicidal depression, if I suddenly died, I would wake up just like this, with your hands cupped around mine, and everything would be okay. But that was a lie. Because nine months later, even when I know you’ll never return, I wake up panicking to your absence even though there is a new lover next to me, and she does not deserve this. She asks me what’s wrong but I can only lament in terrible silence. Because you left your heart in my throat, a love so thick and palpable, and it only responds to your venom.

You, you with all the things you do with your red lips, you make me think if I’m really living. If this life is what I really desired. I thought I wanted a safety song. Someone easy to love. Someone to keep me warm underneath my skin. Someone who doesn’t leave at nature’s whim. I thought I wanted this. You made sure I wanted this. Didn’t I want this? Didn’t I always ask for this even when I recognized I was but a doormat to you? That I was replaceable and easy? So say that I can live like this. Say that I cherish her as much as I do you, anything but the truth, can I live like this?

I thought it was the gentle warmth I craved but no, it was the wildfire. How at this moment, I would die all over again to have you. Round and round I go chasing this voice, and I can’t take any shortcuts to be with you. I hate this, that I love you. That I am glued to the carousel and that your absence is still so vigorously bright. You, a faraway insanity that I’m chasing. You, a meaningful collision that I now only feel the weight of everything crashing all at once. You make me want to destroy ships and offer the souls of the sailors so you would come grace me. You make me want to wrestle pearls from every oyster all for you to recognize me. For me to ask you if you love me. If you ever loved me. Would you have ever loved me? Or the ones who come after me, who will come after you just like this?

Now, this carousel is all that’s left of you. You, the whiskey you left in my car, the sweet flowers you quickly picked in the fields for me because you forget it was our anniversary, and your dress that I buried. This is what’s left of you. These objects, once the highlight reels of my fairy-tale love, are no more than abandoned shells without meaning. I know this. I also know I am a selfish lover. But it hurts. Why did you leave me here all alone to die? Why couldn’t I see that this was all fun and games until one of us fell in love?

This feeling of yearn, how I so easily swing between hope and despair, I am used to it. But my body wants to survive without you. Without alcohol staining my blood. Without hurting my lover in the process. I am in a fragile state dealing with this on all on my own. Learning how to let you go. Doing it without losing control. So I will allow myself to say it only just this once on this starlight chase. I miss you, and I love you. Even in all the times you disappeared with the sunsets, I love you and I am riding this dragon as a testimony to that.

So just this once. Just this once, I will hear the song you created for me on this dragon. These small, music movements that the carousel carries me on. I shame myself wanting these melodies more than I want myself. But these sounds, no matter how much they consume me, are nothing more than a performance you have played for far too long. Someday, they will fade away, far away from my reach, like tangled up flowers seized by the fall winds. I am free this way because it was only just this once that I asked myself this question.

Should I have died to be with you?

Photo by Florian Olivo.