So

(Notes: This is the story that let me know I could write a book. It was written at the end of my first period of story-writing; I began writing it while I was still in Tokyo, late summer ‘09, and finished it sometime later that fall, back in the good ‘ol US of A. From a technical perspective, it was the longest story I’d written, and was the first to require real editing. “Carry”, for example, came out pretty easily. But “So” had parts that were a real struggle, in terms of figuring out what should happen next. I’d always been editing-averse, emotionally attached to the words I’d produced; “So” was the story in which I learned how to dissolve that attachment, my training ground for learning how to edit and for developing an appreciation for that aspect of the craft. Beyond that, “So” also laid the groundwork for some of the most important structural aspects of This is Love: e.g. elements of the narrator’s perspective, the author-as-character.

Most importantly, though, it was the first time I was able to transpose my own life experience(s) into the medium of an actual story. I can see within it, now, things about that particular exercise that didn’t come off so well; imperfections due to my inability to extricate my personal feelings from my work/responsibilities as an author. What I mean, is that there are places the story goes, because I wanted it to go there; as opposed to letting the story unfold and travel of its own accord. Still, it was a very important step though, in that regard. Which is why, despite what I see as the story’s failures, I’ve still published it here. Because of what it taught me, lessons learned on the book-writing road.)

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

So, everybody wants a happy ending. Everybody wants resolution, and they want it to arrive bearing gifts of contentment, of happiness, of deeply felt satisfaction.

But this kind of happy ending seems to elude me, to be consistently beyond my grasp. Sometimes I think that’s because it’s the sort of thing that exists only in the collective imagination, because it isn’t actually real; other times I think, well, that’s just your disappointment and cynicism talking. But either way, I think about it.

After all, what’s more important than the ending? Sure, there’s the journey, everyone wants a good journey. But the only reason you leave from one place is to get somewhere else. And you want to have a good time on the way, lots of adventure, surely; but, the whole time, what you’re thinking more than anything else is: what will it be? What will it be like when I come to it?

You imagine it, you wonder; you hope, you try to calm your hope for the sake of your fear and anxiety. And above all, you dream. At night, asleep somewhere beneath the blanket of twinkling stars, you drift on the waters and dream of what it will finally be.

In my dreams there are dark and crashing waterfalls, shadowy gardens, mysterious depths. Strange beings who whisper secrets in my ear. Great cities in which I lose myself, great empty ruins of cities that echo with lost names. And I dream of her. Walking by somewhere. Just watching me, silent, with an expression on her face and in her eyes that I cannot understand.

She walks in my dreams. And then later on I wake, am alone again in the morning light. Among the known and fixed qualities of a bed, a pillow, a ticking clock. A shower to take to wash things away, clothes to wear, a breakfast to feed the mundane hunger of my corporeality. The ghosts and secret beings don’t follow me here, there is no visible trace. She is in this world, out there somewhere; she is still living, as far as I know, still breathing the air into her body. I wonder if the time will come when she will leave my dreams as well.

You can probably guess by now that this story doesn’t have that happy ending. That there will be no: little white cottage at the end of a country lane, no rising final crescendo of the symphony, no bodies intertwined in an embrace against the sunset-filled sky. I don’t know what all that is, honestly, and so it’s not something I can give you.

But to tell you how things won’t end is a different thing than telling you how they will. I wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t give away the end here, just at the very beginning. And even if I wanted to I couldn’t, I can’t.

Because I don’t know how this story ends. To say that I don’t yet disbelieve in happy endings is also to say, of course, that I don’t quite believe in them either. Everyone also wants turmoil, drama; wants to feel that intense pain in the breast, that sad ache in the heart. The stories of great tragedy are passed carefully down through the generations, monuments that people re-visit purposefully time and again. Hope dashed against the rocks and a sadness: that will linger, will be a shadow always.

But then I don’t really believe in this ‘unhappy’ ending, either. Real life disables the tying of all the loose knots, the desire for neatly drawn red ribbons; its continual motion denies that sort of finality.

And yet there are endings, finished things. Processes of becoming that culminate, deep red blossoms that finally emerge from the long green stem.

So I don’t know. There are too many living complexities for me to name her easily as either a joy or a sadness, too many different kinds of memories.

It does feel as though something has come to a close, and I want to know what it is. Maybe I’m just holding on to something, I say to myself. And it moves, deep within me, that I do not want to let that something go.

___________________

We were standing, outside. It was night and it was raining and it was windy, so that the drops of water came down and blew at your body, slid across your face. And she looked at me; she looked at me, and then away, and then back at me, and then away again.

She looked helpless. She looked like a lost something, wet and wet in her eyes as she looked at me, and she was so beautiful. She was so beautiful to me as she stood there. And she saw what I saw, she looked in my eyes and she saw that god, that beauty.

There were people, other people walking. Everyone hurrying away from the night. There was a train she was supposed to take. But it was just a train, just a simple machine, and she and I were sustaining the birth of a universe. The train would come and go, and it came and went, and she stood there, this shape on which I had fastened the hope of everything.

She looked at me and she spoke and she said,

“What now? I missed the train. What…what do we do, now?”

“Does it matter?” I said; “Has it ever mattered?”

She moved, the movement indicated the rain and the wind, indicated that we were in bodies; that we would become hungry, that we would want comfort, that we would want to sleep.

“Back to my apartment,” as I moved to her, took her arm in my hand.

I cannot tell you the things that we said; cannot find the words that came from our mouths. They were only screens, prevailing sentiments, dying flowers. I can tell you that we argued with each other, lay in the darkness and it was an argument, a locked struggle.

And the time drifts, the darkness sifts, the struggle is fading, is softened in the dark falling snow. Silence. Fatigue is the feel of the world turning, and beneath the blankets I turned to her, at last too tired to turn anywhere else. I think there was a bare glow, around us a shimmer that I didn’t notice.

She whispered to me.

“Come closer..”

And time stopped, and opened up a moment of pocketed space. My arms came around her body at the beginning and our mouths came quietly together at the end. Something swam, flowed through the darkness of the completed circuit; touching and knowing all of this new-born shape.

There was a locked room, deep down inside of me. She stood before it; she reached out and simply opened the door.

And an electric strength rose in my body, a blossoming of everything all at once. I had thought that I remembered who I’d once been, and as it came rushing back to me I saw clearly what I had forgotten. I held her and held her and held her in my arms; from within the body given to me by some godliness, I wrapped myself around this beautiful creature who had finally awoken me.

___________________

And then? Then. And? Then, and, and then, and, then, and then and then and then. The ands and the thens keep coming, piling up outside the door. The what next, the what comes after.

The world is a constant stream of and thens, questions that press for answers. We were granted no exception; a short reprieve maybe, but no more. And then the world and all of its and thens started knocking, seeping through the cracks and whispering in ears, tapping on shoulders. Relentless in its need to ruin everything.

Someone in the audience speaks up: “Well. Well, c’mon now. Isn’t this a little absurd? Surely you never actually believed that the outside world would go away, surely you never actually forgot the ongoing context of existence. And even supposing that you had, or could, why on earth would you want to? Who, what kind of person would ever want such a thing?”

“Hold on, hold on,” I say. “First of all, recall that I’m writing this all down afterwards. That as we’re having this conversation I’m sitting alone with my cigarette and cup of coffee, in this cafe with people I don’t know and will never know, and all the while someone I’ve known body and soul is out there somewhere and yet completely severed from me. So yes, of course, logically I know that the world was never gone, and I know that I’d never truly want that anyhow. But something inside of me feels wrong right now, and it isn’t really interested in anyone’s logical explanations.”

“Well.” Says someone else. “Well, be that as it may, still the fact of even suggesting such a thing, regardless of some level of emotional distress, strikes me as disconcertingly solipsistic. Strikes me as indicative of an emotional tendency in you that may even, if I may say so; that may even have precipitated, I would go so far as to say may even have ensured, this nascent relationship’s eventual breakdown and following dissolution.”

I sit quietly for a bit, smoking. Considering this proposition. Exhaling the smoke in thin streams, gathering my thoughts.

“Okay,” tapping my cigarette on the ashtray. “Okay. Yes, I’ll cop to that. I’ll admit to the fact of a very strong desire in me to love and be loved. A desire that at times is strong enough to eclipse portions of my awareness, to draw curtains across certain things, certain conflicts, particular realities. I’ll even allow that, yes, this tendency can be destructive, and could’ve played a role in causing us to break apart. Yes, I acknowledge that, without conflict or caveat; we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it were otherwise.”

I break off for a moment. Take one last drag from the cigarette, stub it out before continuing.

“But.” I say this with a period, with emphasis. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to completely let the world off the hook. All its needs, its expectations, its constructions of rightness and wrongness. On an island somewhere, we would’ve stayed together until the last breath left our bodies. And you can call that a fantasy, a dream. But dreams are how people enable things, how they create. A goal at which they direct themselves: ‘I have a dream’ says the power in men and women, and it breaks and re-makes reality.”

My voice has risen a bit. I light another cigarette, my hand trembles slightly. No one out there is saying anything now.

“I don’t blame the world,” I say. “I won’t paint myself as a victim, I willingly accept my full responsibility. But there is a world out there that acts in opposition. That crucifies, assassinates with bullets; piles endless bills into the mailbox, drains with greed and oppresses with power. And I am wrestling with something, and I can’t afford to leave any stones unturned. Yes, a strong desire moves in me. But it moves; something I can feel, something beautiful, inordinately and incredibly beautiful. It cries out for her, and I want to know, I need to know, why she is no longer there to answer.”

The thin line of quiet smoke, drizzling into the air. It’s just me, alone. Alone with my coffee and cigarette, a quiet island in the conversational waters, clink of cups on saucers, music from the stereo.

I’ve exposed myself by now. My weaknesses, my vulnerabilities. But as I said: I’m not here for happy endings. Not here for pity, not here to render some epic, gorgeous tragedy. I’m here with the memories, with the ghosts in my garden. Not asking them to go away, not anymore. What I’m asking of them now, is to look at me; I’m asking them, finally, to look me in the eye.

___________________

That morning a child grew up between us. A thing that felt joy, that felt pain, a living shape and quality.

We kissed, we could not stop kissing; the shape we made began there and traced its way around the rest of our bodies. What started as an overwhelming flood became a flow, a language. Mouths drawn together like magnets, saying: I need you. I need you to be with me. I have been searching for you for longer than I can remember, and oh my god here you are.

A physical feeling becomes an emotional feeling; who you are is inseparable from your body. And why would you ever want to be otherwise? Distinctions between the body and soul disappear, fade and scatter.

I could not believe how beautiful she was as I looked at her, as I looked into her eyes; I could not believe how I was containing this beauty.

Yes, it was a dream. But it was a living dream, a dream that had come alive. Please forgive me if I linger here. Forgive me, please, if I want to stay for a longer moment in the sensation of being whole.

The body is a long memory. It is a house with endless rooms, a garden of endless feeling. We knew that we had been born, that we would die someday. The love we made was a modeled object, a gift; a testament to the stars, to the sweet bright light I carried into her body, and that she whispered, softly, back into mine.

Later I was on the balcony with a cigarette, alone. The day overcast, the light that melancholic gray beneath the covering mass of cloud. And the whole world seemed to breathe, to ever-so-softly fall and rise. It was some kind of wonder; each line, each shape, everything out there laced with a tender love, everything in the world an epic struggle, an attempt to make something, to try and keep trying in the face of the vast question of existence. It moved, it welled up from within and the tears gathered into my eyes; tears that spoke to one another as they fell in crystalline and dying voices.

I turned and she was there, she came to me. I held her away for a moment, held her just far enough away so that she could see it, so that I could say it to her.

“I have felt this way before. But I have not felt like this, have not felt this, in a very, very long time.”

Her eyes went wide; she shivered, melted and rose into me. I held her face between my hands and kissed her; softly, firmly, just kissed her in the falling snow.

___________________

And somehow all I’m left with is: what happened? What, exactly, went wrong? Chain-smoking, traveling in ruts as I sit here trying to pull it together. Maybe those are the wrong questions, a mistaken perspective. Maybe that desire for happy endings is obscuring the view again, occluding my vision.

But then there are mistakes that you make; mistakes that you will make again if you don’t uncover them in time. And maybe it’s a mistake to be sitting here, sitting with this attempt to identify or acknowledge an ending. Maybe as I sit here scribbling in circles I’m calling an ending into premature birth, ensuring the finality of our separation; talking myself into accepting something that’s totally unacceptable. Inaction disguised as action. Weakness. Allowing the world to dictate the terms, simply withdrawing into the submissive corner. Rationalizing everything in a long, quiet walk to the grave.

Oh, c’mon now. ‘A long quiet walk to the grave?’ This tendency to dramatize, to draw the world as an antagonist. It feels dangerously self-involved; yes, solipsistic. Disembodied, chasing wild mind-geese. I need some perspective that’s less emotionally involved than my own.

So I’m calling Theodore. He says: Yes, let’s get together. Since it’s a lovely spring day today, we decide to meet in the park.

A half-hour later I arrive. Theodore’s there, seated comfortably on a wooden bench. Theodore’s always comfortable, perpetually the eye of the hurricane. Chaos seems to bend around him, to bow with respect to the integrity of his nature.

He doesn’t notice me at first. He’s watching an old man, walking with his old dog. The old man stands while the dog sniffs out the afternoon dog-newspaper at the base of an ancient sycamore. The man and the dog seem to co-exist with the tree’s perfect patience; the idea of hurrying, anywhere, has never occurred to them. Theodore looks up, sees me, smiles and gives a little wave; I take a seat next to him, and we sit for a while watching the old man-dog-tree tableau.

As they move away Theodore laughs, turns to me.

“Who would you rather be, the man or the dog?” he says.

“What about the tree?” I reply. “Although, then I guess you’d have to continually suffer the indignity of being peed on.”

“No, no it’s a tribute, right? All the dogs saying: ‘This is the place. I come here to get my serious business done.’”

“Hmm, maybe…I don’t know if that’s enough to make me feel that it’s worth smelling like a doggy bathroom all the time.”

Theodore laughs again. “True, I’d have to say that’s true. It’s not really the world’s number one smell, is it. Unless of course you’re a dog, apparently.”

“Well, maybe I’d want to be the dog then.”

“Just so you could enjoy the smell of piss?”

“Piss, shit, vomit, the works. As far as I can tell, there are no bad smells in the dog-world.”

“Olfactory freedom, huh? Everything’s just a different, wonderful bouquet. Alright then, the dog it is. You’ve convinced me!”

He claps his hands together, closes his eyes and inhales, dramatically; the breath is held, with a very solemn expression on his face, and finally he exhales with a long, satisfied sigh.

His eyes open and he turns to me; wipes his brow with the back of his hand once, slowly, as though he’s just experienced some overwhelming, exhausting pleasure.

“Wow. I’ve got this, this sudden craving to sniff me up some dog butt!”

“Sniff you up some dog butt, cool. That’s nice, Theodore, really nice.” He beams, well-pleased with himself, and squeezes my shoulder with affection.

“And how are you doing, my Little Brother? It’s good to see you.”

We’re actually the same age, almost exactly: February 7th, 1978. Theodore came into the world at 11:46 in the morning, and was well into his first nap when I emerged, red and crying, at 7:20 on that dark midwinter’s eve. He calls me Little Brother because of this; because we felt a kinship from the very first as we shook hands and said ‘nice to meet you’.

I raise my forearm to blow away a little gnat-like insect that’s gotten entangled in my arm-hairs.

“It’s good to see you too, Theodoricus. I’m doing okay. Going through this…um, this thing that I mentioned when I called you. I started to find myself traveling in circles around it, and I felt like I needed more than a blank wall to bounce things off. I’m just guessing in the dark, and I don’t think my guesses are good enough.”

“Mm. No, you always know enough, it’s in there somewhere.” He stands up, cat-stretches. Gestures with a movement of his head towards the rest of the park. “C’mon. Let’s take an amble.”

It’s a pretty big park. You can walk for a long time without crossing the same spot twice. Hilly, varied terrain: long sloping lawns, a few good-sized ponds, tall and shadowy small forests. Big enough to let you forget at times that you’re still in the city. The first time I found myself here after dark I got lost. Found myself distinct enough from civilized urbanity to be, if not quite afraid, definitely a bit anxious.

I grew up around and within fairly wild places, but finding myself lost here while in full city-mode was an unnerving experience. The deep darkness of a room just after you turn off the light, before your eyes adjust. After that it became one of my favorite places in the city; a context in which to re-tune, make alterations.

Today it’s beneath a clear blue sky, on a gentle spring afternoon. Full of people doing all the things people do in parks: headphone-joggers, frisbee-tossers, people sitting under trees with books, people talking and lounging on blankets in the grass and the sunshine. We stroll, ‘amble’ as per Theodore’s dictum. The city in spring: people emerge from their holes, from their overcoats and woolen hats and scarves, and you can feel it, feel the whole city sighing another long winter away.

“You know,” Theodore says after awhile, “I can tell that there is something different this time. You’re not lost in it. Sad, yes; but also not. Still in balance. Holding it, maybe, instead of having it hold you.”

I glance up and find him looking at me, and as I do a butterfly flies, flits in between us; I stop, watching its different, particular dance as it moves away, as it rises back up into the air.

I stick my hands in my pockets and shrug, looking down as we resume the walk; watching my feet carry me across the ground.

“For a while,” I say slowly, still looking down, “she needed me. Would call me, crying. And being needed, it’s a strong feeling. Not just being needed, but being able to support the need. To get off the phone after hours and feel drained, exhausted but never telling her, ‘Stop; enough, I can’t take anymore.’ To help somebody bear their sadness, to be strong when somebody needs you to be strong. But…”

I look over at him, a meaningful look. He nods.

“It sounds a little familiar.”

“Yeah. And I knew it. I knew that I was falling into that again. And I told myself, ‘Well, even so, I can’t abandon this person, can’t abandon her now that she’s come to depend on me.’ But I still knew; deeper down maybe, maybe I didn’t say it to myself; but I still knew that that was just an excuse. That…that allowing her to have that kind of dependency on me was just a way for me to feel strong again.”

Theodore just looks at me and smiles, in a quiet way, and we keep walking.

We’re in one of the park’s mini-forests now. Tall, old trees; it’s hard to tell if they’ve been planted here or if the park has been built around them. Either way, they have come to possess this space; everything in it is filtered and refracted through the infinite layers of green. The light, the air, the sound. Even the birdsong that comes intermittently from here and there seems muted; imbued with a quality of respect, or reverence.

I’ve never been what you’d call a religious person, but I feel that in a place like this; feel something akin to a sense of worship. It’s not that I feel an urge to bow, to come down to my knees. It’s just like an awareness that rises, a remembering of all the life that goes on beyond you. It doesn’t want you to kneel or bow, it doesn’t want anything, that’s kind of the point. So I don’t try to give it anything, any words or actions. I just accept what it offers, just let myself feel that feeling.

And as we walk through this emerald cathedral of air and light, Theodore begins to hum something, a song I’ve never heard before. It’s slow, careful, almost methodical, as though each note needs to be fully landed on before carrying to the next. Just before the end it rises, as if casting itself up into the air, before finally coming back down again to the quiet ground.

It’s short, less than a minute long. He falls silent and we keep walking, and then after a bit he begins again, only this time he sings words; words that clarify the purpose and deepen the mystery at the same time.

“Do I, li-ive, in, the dark-ness, do I li-ive, in, the darkness…do I li-ive, in, the darkness O my, soul — , Oh my, soul…

Do I, live — , in, the dark-ness,”

— (and in the following line is where the song rose) —

“Do I li-ive, i-in, the dark-ness…

Do I li-ive, in, the dark-ness, O my, soul…O my soul…”

Theodore falls back into silence. I glance at him but say nothing. We walk on.

A short time later we find ourselves back out in the open, underneath the deepening sky. Next to a small lake, sitting on a log at the water’s edge, beneath the shade of a medium-sized tree which is nearly fully-leafed but still carrying a few last, late white blossoms. We sit, looking out across the water.

“So,” says Theodore after awhile. “So here you are with me. And without her. And Little Brother’s sad, yes, but not broken. There is something in him that she left in him, but it is his, it belongs to him. A gift. And he knows it; knows that it’s his, that it’s not going anywhere. But he doesn’t yet know what to do with it. He can’t figure it out on his own; feels distracted by remembering her, remembering all the things that were so strong and beautiful. So he calls his Older Brother Theodore, who doesn’t see those things; who will be able to see the gift clearly, without those obscuring memories, without those distractions, without that confusion. He wants Theodore to tell him what the gift is. And Theodore can; but he doesn’t really have to, does he? Because really; really, my Little Brother already knows.”

I feel the words sink into me, disappear into the places they are supposed to go. And I see it. Looking down at my hands, I see it. The same hands that had woken up and found themselves holding her, that had traced the strength of my heart across the skin of her body.

I shake my head as the teardrops hang in my eyelashes, blur my vision.

“She stopped needing me, Theo. She knew I couldn’t, wouldn’t break away. She knew, and she pulled it back into herself. She set me free. And I’m so grateful, and sad, and angry, and confused.” I spread my hands out before me, gesturing at everything, all of it; the senselessly extraordinary living world all around me. “It’s so beautiful, Theodore, and I don’t know what to do.”

I am trembling. All this feeling, this tremendous feeling, and I don’t know what to do with it, I have no idea where it is supposed to go. How can I bear it alone; how can I bear the feeling of being alive, all alone?

I hear Theodore shift, move; feel his hand come to rest on my shoulder and squeeze, tightly. When he speaks his voice is low, calm.

“I know it hurts. And I’m so happy to see it. To see you acknowledging the pain, feeling the pain; feeling everything. You feel things so deeply, Little Brother; you have such a big heart. It’s how you are supposed to be.”

He squeezes tightly once more, pressing his care into me, and withdraws his hand. I sit, looking out at the world: the sun beginning to dip towards the horizon, the trees. The people walking and talking, playing, pursuing their various dreams; taking this respite here to just breathe, before re-assuming the burden.

“She was….she was like me, Theo. She was able to bring me back up, from wherever I was, because she was like me. She had no layers of protection; she saw it all, felt everything. And I know that what she did makes sense, that I wouldn’t be here, would still not really be here, if she hadn’t done it. But it just feels…I don’t know…something just doesn’t feel complete.”

“Little Brother, I think you already know this, but I’ll say it anyway. I think I’m not the one you really need to talk to.”

“I know, Theodore. But I can’t talk to her, I really can’t. I can’t interrupt her choice to pull away with my own need. And worse, that would be to ignore what she gave me, to make it meaningless. Of course I’ve wanted to talk with her, I mean she’s still out there. But I can’t.”

“I know that. I know you can’t talk to her out there. But that’s not what I mean.”

There’s this particular note in his voice. I look up, and he’s looking at me, in this very direct fashion. And I know, I know exactly why, exactly what he’s getting at; but I’ve gotten so far into this that I’m not really sure of where I am, of where to go from here.

“Theo, I…I don’t — “

“Stop,” he says. “Watch this,” he says, and suddenly he’s gone. I haven’t moved, haven’t blinked, and he is suddenly just not there anymore. I hear this voice from somewhere, saying Do you see?, and it’s his voice, and then just as suddenly there he is, the solidity of Theodore is right beside me again. I reach out tentatively, my hand touches warm skin; he smiles at me.

“We don’t need to pretend anymore, do we?” he says. “Yes, there was a purpose for me here. But I’ve served that purpose, Little Brother, and you know I have. What now, do you want us to go out for ice cream, for a beer? Sure, we can do that; but what I want to know first is, just how much longer are you going to continue to try and hide your head in the sand?” I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Nothing wafts on the breeze into Theodore’s ears. He’s right. There is nothing that I have to say to him anymore. And then I remember, and I ask him,

“The song you sang; what about that song?”

And he just laughs, and the sound of his laughter is like moving water. “Little Brother, you know that I heard you sing that song first.”

There’s a sound now, from very far away; a sound that I know has nothing to do with this world I’m in with Theodore, but I’m hearing it nonetheless.

He says, gently: “It doesn’t make me any less real. It doesn’t make anything less real. No one can make the journey to your heart but you; no one can make that journey but you, and you alone.”

I look into his eyes, and he looks back into mine. He nods, barely, and I understand that there is a blessing being given to me here in the way that this person is saying goodbye.

And I close my eyes.

___________________

I hear a kind of whispering sound, feel myself in the darkness. I open my eyes again.

I blink. Once, twice, trying to adjust to the sudden sound and light and confusion. I’m on a train, a subway train tunneling through the ground, in a car packed with people, completely full. Hardly any room to move, pressed against by bodies on all sides. I am completely disoriented, can’t remember why I’m here or where it is I’ve come from, and I start to feel a sense of panic. No expression save exhaustion on the faces packed in around me; no clues, no sense of meaning, just submission to the will of this machine barreling through the dark void. I struggle to move, to breathe, the panic is rising…and then I see her, and suddenly I remember everything.

She is standing at the far end of the car, away from me, with the same blank expression on her face as everyone else. But as I stare at her from across what seems like a great distance I see something move across her cheek, and I realize that she is crying.

She is facing the window, pressed against the door. I try to call out to her, but the only sound that comes out of me is a hoarse, dry whisper. I take a deep breath; concentrating, focusing on her, fighting down the fear. And with a great effort of will I call to her again, and this time my voice rings out, strikes into the air. She hears, turns and looks at me for a long moment, and turns away again. And I can see that she is crying harder now.

I start to try and make my way towards her, but it is impossible. No one seems to acknowledge my desire to move, no one seems to even be aware of me; as much as I struggle I can find no way through them, there is simply no room. I cry out to her again, but she does not look at me; and after a moment she bends her head and covers her face with her hands.

The panic is rising again, the fear is swelling, and I am fighting for control. The train begins to slow, and with a sudden desperate hope I think: The station, of course, it’s coming into the station; we’ll get off there, we can get to each other once we get off at the station. But as the train now emerges from the dark tunnel my hope withers on the vine. For the platform is jam-packed with people, as full as the train; and all with the same dead-tired expressions, a sea of gray and lightless faces.

The train comes to a stop, shudders, sighs. And the doors open and the waters rush towards each other with abandon. I am borne out of the car onto the platform, my feet are nearly lifted off the ground. I see her carried out as well, and I push, shove, desperately try to swim my way towards her but it is useless; the current is overwhelming and carrying us in opposite directions, the force of the faceless crowd far greater than that of a single lost soul. I try to cry out to her, to scream, but my voice is gone, she is further and further and being carried away…

And I hear him, hear him singing; from where it is coming I don’t know, but I hear him singing that song.

“…live, in, the dark-ness…do I, li-ive, in, the dark-ness, O my, soul…”

I catch a last glimpse of her as she is borne off, swallowed up. I take in a long, deep breath. Inside I find it, find my body anchored to the earth. I stand still and breathe out, slowly, let the crowd flow back and forth around my solid form. And again I close my eyes.

I hear that same muffled, somewhere whispering sound. Feel it dissolve, disappear, become pure darkness. And this time I keep my eyes shut tight. I can feel the darkness all around me; the lack of anything, the emptiness. Alone, utterly alone. I feel the fear of it, and want suddenly to open my eyes again, to see something, anything beyond myself, any other thing at all. But I don’t. I keep my eyes shut and I hold myself there; hold myself with the fear in the soundless black.

And I begin to feel that there is something beneath the fear, a somewhere that it comes from. It begins to fade, slowly; finally dispersing into only echoes, and then gone. I feel just the breath, just myself breathing. The rise and fall of my body. The long songs of ghosts in the sweet, gentle garden. I open my eyes.

At first, it is still only dark. An enveloping dark, an absence of anything at all; except, for me. Body, soul, I don’t know what to call it. Words and language are perhaps too young yet to give it the right name. But it is me, a whole and unmistakeable being. And one-by-one, my senses begin to perceive.

The smell of earth and grass, wild things. Cricketsong, the breeze rustles through leaves. And a light begins to grow: points of light, tiny white points in the dark sea. They rise up, up, up, twinkling into life, hundreds, thousands, millions, an uncountable number of stars in the living theater of the night sky. I fill my lungs with the cool night air, and as I gaze into the eyes of all those silent gods I feel a hand slip into mine; feel the fingers as they interlace together.

Even this, I can clearly remember. Even just the feel of this hand in mine is something I remember so well.

“I always wanted to take you somewhere where you could see the stars,” I say, still looking up. “Wanted you to see this. To see the thing you can’t see in the city. I thought it would…I thought it might help, I guess.”

She laughs, gently, her fingertips draw figures on my palm.

“Silly boy. I’ve actually seen the stars before, you know.”

“I know. But I also know you’ve never really lived with them, and I know that even though you can remember them while you’re in the city, when you actually see them again you realize what you forget, what you’ve forgotten; not just you, me too, anyone, everyone. And I just thought, that maybe…”

“No.” Her response is calm and abrupt. “You can’t save me. It’s not your job to try, it’s not your life. And anyways you can’t, not even with a sky full of stars.”

“…I know. I know, and really I always knew.” I’m quiet for a moment, letting myself feel it. “I also just wanted to see it with you, for us to be able to see this together.”

“That’s because you’re sweet,” she says, and I turn to look at her. In the dark of night her features are dim, but still unmistakeable to me. They strike that same chord, I feel the stone drop into that same deep, secret pool.

“I used to think of the stars when I looked at you,” I say. “Or maybe not the stars, exactly. But think the same thoughts, or feel the same feeling. Of…of not being able to believe how beautiful you were. Not being able to believe that I could feel it, could see it. But it was like a secret. My voice would rise up with it from inside, but then it would come out wrong, or just wouldn’t come out at all. And it felt like…like I wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough to speak it, like I wasn’t enough to make it live.”

She brings my hand to her mouth, presses her lips there and is still, for a long while.

Finally she moves, letting my hand go as she does so. She takes a few short steps away from me and stops, stands looking up at the sky. I am watching her: seeing the memories in the way she holds herself, the way she lives within her body.

“Do you remember when you said you loved me?” she asks, turning to me.

“Yes, of course I do.”

She is quiet; I can feel that she is waiting, that she is watching me.

“Can you tell me why? Why did you say that?” Her voice is soft, and it hurts; hurts to feel her peeling back the layers, peering down into me.

“Because…because I didn’t know what else to say. Because I wanted to see how it sounded. Because I couldn’t find another word in the place where I was looking.”

“But love wasn’t in that place either, was it?”

“I…I don’t know. I mean, I can’t say yes, but I can’t say no, either. Something was in there, something strong and alive; but I couldn’t see it clearly. Couldn’t see it enough to give it a name. But I didn’t know what else to say, and I felt like I had to say something.”

“But that wasn’t the right thing to say, was it.” I look at her, and don’t want to say it. But this isn’t about what I want anymore.

“No. No, it wasn’t. I loved being with you, I loved the way being with you made me feel. But, no; no, it wasn’t the right thing to say.”

She is silent, and then she steps toward me, stops an arm’s length away and holds out her hand; I reach out and take it. Feel her fingers squeeze, grip tightly.

“And do you know why?” she asks me. Softly, almost a whisper. There is a pressure, rising inexorably to the surface now; I take a deep breath, find that I have to look away.

“Yes, I know why,” I hear myself saying. “Because I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t love you. Because I couldn’t believe in the possibility that you could, that you would also love me.” A moment later I feel her palm as it comes to rest against my face; her thumb brushing the wetness across my cheek.

“So many…my sweet boy cries so many tears; so much in him that needs to come out. How can you have so much? How can one person have so much inside?” I look up and find her staring at me; staring into me, searching, her face full of wonder. Her hand on my cheek, her eyes, it breaks within me like a wave against the shore. I shake my head, smiling.

“Hey, cut that out,” I say. “C’mon, I’m a big tough man. I’m just a good actor, these are crocodile tears. Just crying on purpose to make you feel better.”

She smiles. “Hmm, are you sure about that? I think maybe you meant to say you’re a big soft crybaby.”

“Ooh, watch out,” I say, laughing. “Don’t make me mad or else I’ll have to give you a beating.”

“Oh, I’m so scared,” she teases. Squeezes the hand she is holding, slaps me gently with the other. “The big weak baby is going to cry all over me.”

My arm snakes out around her waist and pulls her in tight, fast, squeezing a gasp from her body.

“Whew,” she says, a moment later. “Maybe the baby’s not so weak after all.” She brings her hand to my chest, presses it there. I can feel her ribcage against my fingers, her body warm inside my arm.

“That heart,” she murmurs. “Boom, boom. I used to wonder, almost worry. Sometimes when you were asleep I would put my hand there, just to feel it again.” And the soft fire grows up around us and we sink, fall down slowly to the grass, locked together. A long, deep embrace that runs through my body, that echoes. She pushes back slightly, her fingertips trace my eyebrows, travel the lines of my face.

“That afternoon,” she says. “After the first time. When you came to me and said that. There was so much light in you, and the way you looked at me, the way you spoke to me…I couldn’t help myself. I needed it; I needed it too much to be able to turn away.”

She is silent, and then she kisses me. Presses her mouth against mine with an intensity that sends a blue and silver light across my head and down my spine, and just as suddenly she breaks away again. She lies on her back, looking up into the sky. I raise myself onto my elbow, looking down at her. The wind calls, the sound of invisible creatures moving around us in the dark grasses, riding the rise and fall of the world’s secret, hidden body. She shivers, speaks quietly.

“I needed too much from you. And you could have, would have given it to me. But that’s not who you are. Who you are, the light that’s in you: it’s not supposed to be given in just one place, it’s not supposed to be given to just one person.”

Her words cut like a knife. Cut into the part of me that still wants just to be with her, to hide myself in her, in the way she needed me; into the part of myself that wanted all the things that I knew were never really going to be mine; her words cut through all those now-dead layers, and strike the living bone.

And it hurts, being exposed that way, naked beneath the stars; god it hurts, makes it hard to breathe.

I close my eyes and lie back in the grass. After awhile she sits up; I can feel her watching me, can feel the whole world watching me. My heart feels like a brick in my chest, an enormous, impossibly heavy burden.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, hearing the helplessness in my voice. “I know that you can’t answer that, I know it’s not a question that anyone else can answer. But all alone in that darkness I can’t see anything, I don’t know where to go. Any direction could be the right direction, any direction could be the wrong direction…I just don’t know what to do.”

I lie there with my eyes closed and don’t want to open them. Don’t want to see the stars just as they are, the night-world just as it is; don’t want to see the way it makes sense, the way it’s all balanced in perfect, harmonious order. I feel like the one wrongness in a world that is right, the one thing that doesn’t know how to move correctly; that doesn’t know how to just be, how to just be in that simple correspondence.

“Listen to me,” comes her voice, clear and firm now. “The train. When you came to find me, at first you found me on that train. Do you know why?” I breathe in, and the breath is a sharp pain. I know that there is nowhere else to go, that there is nothing else for me to go back to.

“Yes,” I say. “Because I was still trying to save you. Still trying to be the person who would save you.”

“And as long as you see the world that way,” she says, “as something from which people need to be saved, you will always find me on that train, will find everyone on that train. And you will always find yourself there, too. Always find yourself struggling against something far greater than you, something you will never, ever overcome.”

She falls silent again. I feel her hand as it slips into mine, the warmth, the gentle pressure. And her voice, when it comes, is so quiet and so strong; so full of something like that butterfly, that birdsong.

“But, we aren’t on that train anymore, are we? Open your eyes, my sweet boy. Open your eyes and look, and tell me where we are.”

I feel afraid; feel the fear, feel it calling. I think, for a last moment, of just slipping away. But to what? And from what? What was behind that fear: from where, exactly, did it come. I am not a person who prays, but I found myself now praying; found a prayer in me that rose up, into the air, and as it went I followed it with my now wide-open eyes.

And there above me is the night sky: filled with stars and ghosts and spirits, filled with an uncountable number and variety of stories and dreams. Pinwheels of blue and green flames, old men that sat with cigarettes, alien beings, fields full of gorgeous red flowers. Gods and monsters, extraordinary machines, women who cried and children who sang; the great joy of birth and the last voice of death, everything. An ocean of the imagination, bounded only by the capacity for wonder.

I turn my head, find her smiling down at me. She nods: Yes, Yes, and I reach out. I reach out for her, and where my hand touches her face we feel the birth of starlight. It burns, whether or not it is love it is a glow that burns blue and silver and bright.

There is no need to speak out loud anymore.

She is asking me: is this your happy ending?

No. This is not the world, I will go back to the world. This is just a dream I had, a dream I will remember.

And this? This is just how it ends.

(I wrote a book called This is Love. You can buy it here. Find out more at: http://www.jeremyjaeger.com/)