“Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove”
She wandered around the house, book open in her hands, too troubled to be productive, too anxious to stand still. ‘What could I do at this point?’, she wondered. The streets were silent, everybody was tucked in their beds, exactly where they were supposed to be. But not her. She was restless.
“Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou madest man, he knows not why
He thinks he was not meant to die
And thou hast made him; thou art just”
It had dawned on her that another year was coming. Another digit would be added to her documents, another candle added to her already crowded birthday cake, another year of the same old story she was sick and tired of reading. ‘What am I supposed to be doing?’ she pleaded with God early that morning. But just like that, she stumbled upon a new paragraph.
‘Thank you for being you’.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone was grateful for her existence. Her heart couldn’t even conceive the thought of being of importance to someone she barely knew. Sure, friends and family loved and cherished her, but they knew her all her life. This? This came out of nowhere, as if magic. Had he SEEN her? Had she been actually understood? Never in a million years had she thought it could be. Could she possibly have wrongly opened a different book, maybe a children’s book, maybe a fairy tale?
“We have but faith; we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness; let it grow”
She couldn’t believe her today. It felt like some mischievous wizard had fixed her drink with a special dose of Amortentia. Out of three hundred-sixty four nights of gray, it was this greyest that ended up being the best one. She wept as she stared into those kind, silvery orbs, wondering if she had ever seen more beautiful eyes before. To her surprise, they wept back at her, and now everything had changed.
“What words are these have falle’n from me?
Can calm and despair and calm and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast
Or sorrow such a changeling be?”
Tears trickled slowly down her face and smudged the letters in her open book as she tried to make sense of what she had just lived. ‘What am I feeling? What does this mean? How could I feel so much in such a short time?’, she thought as she stared into blackness. She sat down and glanced at her book, her heart beating out of her chest, looking for answers.
“And shall I take a thing so blind
Embrace her as my natural good
Or crush her, like a vice of blood
Upon the threshold of the mind?”
How could she miss something she never had? I think I can answer it for her, if I may. For a second, or maybe for four hours, she DID have it. She admired it, she touched it, she smelled it, she kissed it, she embraced it, she spoke it into existence. I think she just forgot to speak it into foreverness.
And now she felt it. Amongst all the sentiments running through her body, she felt this the strongest.
“That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more;
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break”
How could she get back to her old self? She couldn’t, nor she wouldn’t. Even though her heart hurt, she didn’t care for her former self. Yesterday she didn’t know hope. Yesterday she had given up on faith. Had this not happened, there might not have been a tomorrow for her yesterday self. Now she had seen a small light. Blimey, there could still be a tomorrow after all!
“If all was good and fair we met
This Earth had been the Paradise
It never look’s to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set”
‘What if it doesn’t work out?’
(Does she wanna know?)
‘What if it gets too hard?’
(Does she wanna know?)
‘What if I get my heart broken?’
(Does she wanna know?)
What if, what if, what if, she worried.
What if this is everything you’ve been praying for, child?
This she wants to know.
“I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.”
Would they wait for each other?
Does this feeling flow both ways?
She was sad to see him go,
Sorta hoping he would stay
So she made up a Monkey song
From the things he used to say.
“Come, Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;”
In her heart of hearts, she hoped that she could, one day, stare into those grey eyes again and never lose sight of them. But she didn’t know, how could she? She could only believe. And hope. Just like yesterday, when she had no idea what the future held, today confronted her with her ignorance about what lays ahead. Have they got the guts? Now grey was her favourite color.
“I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage
The linnet born within the cage
That never knew the summer woods;”
The first rays of sun peaked through her blinds.
She slowly got up and opened the window. It had been a dream, alright.
The best summer’s dream she’s had in a long time.
She was sad it had to pause, but she didn’t want it to end.
Under the sober light of day, being awake helped her pretend.
She never once regretted it, that’s for sure.
She didn’t want to dream a different dream.
They could be together if they wanted to.
Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as it seemed.
“I hold it true, whate’er befall
I feel it, when I sorrow most
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than to never to have loved at all.”
She closed her book and smiled.
