My Coda
It’s interesting, isn’t it? How hard it is to realize what you have until suddenly, your eyes open, a new day begins with delicate little brown-grey songbirds and merry life, and suddenly it disappears. Vanished into the starless sky. Or maybe it had never been there at all?
It’s interesting, isn’t it? How it’s the little things that get you down. And then, realization: everything will have a final act, a last chapter, a curtain call. Nothing lasts forever. Not you, or me, or the innocent songbirds; even the stars that dangle alluringly in the ink-stained sky will one day dim when the aria’s finale concludes, when the final waltz ends.
And you don’t even remember.
Do you remember that gentle, tender meadow bright and vivacious with life and song and poem? Our meadow, where the banners of our dawn unfurled and tumbled across the vast world for all to perceive?
Do you remember how you looked at me the first time we met, with stars frozen in your crystalline eyes of adventure and exuberance? How you laughed, a sweet, crisp, unearthly sound of pure innocence and joy? Do you remember the first words you uttered to me? Oh, the delight I felt as your carelessly yet kindly murmured words filled me with the warmth of a crackling hearth, of a midsummer day, of tender, tender love.
The clink of two glasses, shared, leaning on a railing of fragile, twice-shattered glass, overlooking an idyllic fantasy so distant it may as well have been a mirage, or a tiny, tiny speck in the night sky of swirling, vibrant colors and epics of heroes and lovers and gods and goddesses, shadowed and forgotten as they may be, yet existing all the same.
Existence. It’s interesting, don’t you think so?
The rustle of papers, of ancient history, of ink-stained clothes and skin and smile, of flowery words and humble ballads and shimmering, twinkling, twirling, magnificent dances. The nostalgia of saccharine poems and whispers and smiles, of linked hands, linked hearts, linked gazes, nursing the sparks of desire — desire for a place among the endless sea of stars and story.
To be great, or to be forgotten.
The choice was yours. All yours.
Your decision would be mine. I gave you my all—my everything. You were my opening. It seems only fair that you, you, you in your marvelous grandeur and gentle affection will be my closing; my resolution, my last performance.
My Coda.
