“Herein Lies Love”
The sun was going down, the sky shifting colours in a matter of moments. Bright turned dull. Shadows were born and they grew at an alarming rate until they snuffed out the last of the sun’s efforts and even then the darkness seemed to thicken. Ash grey turned to charcoal. It felt better now, unexposed. I continued on, dragging my feet on the muddy path at the centre of Agos, the centre of nowhere. Home. The word left a bitter taste in my mouth. My left eye started to twitch. The damned thing. It always made itself noticed when the same old thoughts started to form, like death’s breath rising from the shadows, up my spine, caressing my neck with lifeless cold fingers and finally poking their way into my mind. I desperately needed a distraction, lest they take hold of the reins to reason and emotion.
Although it was pretty late, there were a few men making their way home, to their wives and children and hot food. Their postures suggested that the waters had been merciful, with plenty of fish to catch.. Even in exhaustion, their strides betrayed a sense of accomplishment, their smiles were genuine. It would be a while before the hard lines of worry etched themselves onto their faces again. I couldn’t bring myself to take part in their joy, though. Funny how the emptier I felt, the space for fulfilment grew smaller.
My feet and whatever steers our subconscious led me through the muddy streets down to the docks and beyond that to the graveyard. The moon marked its attendance for the gazzilionth time, kissing the landscape with its silvery cold light, giving birth to new, and further outlining the existing shadows. Acutely aware of the inevitable sulking at the edges of my vision, I trod up to the gate only to find it open. They had been knocking at the doors of my conscience ever since the world had lost her. They demanded an audience, something that I knew I would have to face sooner rather than later. But I wasn’t yet ready.
The wind was exceptionally strong tonight. I had expected silence. It was a good thing, hopefully it would drown out my thoughts. My clothes – and with them, the bottles of pills in my pocket – flapped against my body, almost violent, almost as if they struggled to get away from me, as if I was their prison and they could taste freedom in the wind. Usually the wind wasn’t this intent on stripping me naked. Usually it was just playful and joyous but I wanted to strip, right down to my soul, to make someone notice the lights that were not there. What was the wind offering tonight? It had listened to my silence every night for weeks. Did it want more? Or was it mocking me for not accepting my fate?
The gate stood ajar, the heavy beams nailed and glued together screaming against the wind’s rage. Or was the rage the blood roaring in my ears? The banging on the doors was growing louder by the moment, urging me to move on but I wasn’t able to. Panic took kinaesthesia and thought captive, if only for a moment. It felt oddly like freedom; giving in to emotion, letting it take control. A lightning bolt had struck me and left me recharged, feeling alive, if only for a moment. But as I grew wistful, another distraction presented itself.
“Lover, family or friend?” asked an old woman standing behind the gate, wrapped in layers upon layers of clothes. I chose not to reply but somehow she had deduced the right answer.
“All three of the, eh?” I met her eye and that was all she needed to confirm her theory. She had guessed. I tried to reach into the depths of my memory to find something relating to this woman but stopped abruptly. It was too difficult to keep other memories at bay. She did not seem to mind my non-responsiveness.
“It’s balance, lad. What would life be without death. It’s completion. You are lucky-”
“Bullshit,” I blurted out.
“Now, now. If you and I can ponder over stars, the stars sure know much more. We spend our whole lives building ourselves a world that makes sense, until we reach the end of a road, where the impossible destroys that world in one smooth motion. What you don’t do is start believing in the unexplainable. It’s not unwise to believe, but it’s only a cold world because you miss her warmth, isn’t it? What do we know, do the stars wonder why they always shine?” she continued. She shuffled closer and offered me a rose which I had no idea where she had produced from. I held her gaze. Her eyes reminded me of the jagged black rocks at the far side of the ocean. They sure were wet all the time, yet they stood up adamant, their resolve concrete against the will of the whole ocean. “I believe there lies a grave at the end of your road, son. Grieve her, but remember that you need to accept if you want your soul to be free.” She went off mumbling to herself.
Stupid bitch with her stupid words. I swung at the thick old gate only to break my toe as I sucked in my breath and the air slammed me down to hit the ground with a possibly broken nose. I lay there for a few excruciating moments struggling to contain myself. Somewhere in the distance, couples broke beds and woke up neighbours. The wind carried their pleasure and the neighbours’ displeasure, as well as a ton of other constituents of human legacy to the skies where the moonlight plastered it against the landscape, while I lay there tasting the dead.
I stumbled over to her grave. It was just like all the other graves there, to my annoyance, a six foot pimple on the earth’s skin. “Herein Lies Love” I imagine would have been written, had there been a headstone. There was a sharp pain between my eyes as I sat down next to her grave, putting the rose where the headstone should have been. It went deeper, the shocks of its throbs extended all the way to the back of my neck. I did not rub between my eyes, it would not work. She would have offered to massage it and that would have worked, I just knew it. It wasn’t something in the way she did it, it was the fact that she did it. The pain was always there, had been ever since, except I was used to it so it had to make itself noticed every now and then. Not its fault, that I craved it so much. It thawed the numbness.
She loved nature. Well, used to and if nature ever had favourites, she would undoubtedly be on that list. Living here, surrounded by nature was her choice and a damn good one, it really made her come alive. Every evening she would wait for me to return with the day’s catch and we would both take it home and she would have it dispatched upcountry first thing next morning. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t catch enough fish, she would be there smiling with all the love she could muster. On our way back she would tell me what I had missed, which mostly constituted her adventures in the wild. Other times we would just walk, appreciating the chance to make it through another day together, enjoying a little reunion of sorts. Until she ceased. Just like that. The sun no longer set hair on fire, the wind no longer took her stories to the heavens, the sands no longer had nature’s chosen proving nature right, the stars no longer had the very embodiment of love to shine upon, the squirrels and pelicans no longer had the human who had a part of mother nature itself in her soul and I….among so many things that describe it, using mere words was too petty. I no longer had the smile that was my drug and I was dying from withdrawal.
I looked over to her grave and felt the bottle of pills resting in my pocket. It had been there for a while now. There was a plant growing on top of her grave where her head would be. She would have liked it. She would love it if there were flowers too. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream, pull my hair out, kill someone. I wanted it all to stop. I wanted me to stop. But I could only regret, for all the tears had dried up and so had my will. The fire of love had burned inside of me and the lights had danced and sung until they had consumed everything and only ashes remained. Was the wind strong enough to blow the ashes to nothingness or does nature heal those who seek love in it, as she used to say? My soul, like my clothes, ached for freedom. Freedom from the black hole that grew everyday. But was the wind only mocking me?
I laid down my head on her and closed my eyes.
“Help me, please,” a desperate plea escaped my lips.
“Grieve her, but remember that you need to accept if you want your soul to be free.” The wind was a force to be reckoned with now. The pounding on the doors was louder than ever. Need to accept… I let the doors open and braced myself. Something shifted inside of me. The moonlight grew brighter and brighter until my vision was completely bathed in silvery white. I felt reassurance buzzing through my veins like electricity. I realised I was screaming and the wind was screaming and I was burning again, revived from the ashes. The moment of epiphany passed and I found the strength to stand up. There was no longer a black hole. I could feel again, could live again.
I took out the bottle and my eyes welled up for the first time in days as I flung it as hard as could into the night sky. I turned around and tasted salty tears because I was smiling so hard. It felt good to feel again now that there wasn’t a black hole to suck everything in. I had a job, a job passed on to me by nature. I had to balance out the love that was lost to the world. I put one foot in front of the other and made a mental note to tell the squirrels and pelicans that everything was going to be okay.
