Love and Distance, III

They exist in different directions.

Like most moments of clarity, his genius was more accident than miracle. It was written on a draft manuscript for a local theater production. The author, who spoke English as a third or fourth language, had meant to write exit. But there it was, the deepest profundity I had ever laid eyes on. And it was a typo.

They exist in different directions.

What is the shape of love? What is its texture? I had always thought of her as borderless, shapeless. Yet definite. How? I’ve held love in my arms, yes, but she also molded my thoughts, my dreams; wet clay on her docile hands. She gave me shape, she gave me texture, but how did she give what she didn’t have?

They exist in different directions.

What is the sound of love? What is his voice? He taught me how to speak, though first not in words. Those brilliant eyes - they take me back to a time before before I thought of me as me - are my living memory of love. Have I never told you? These words were his long before I ever wrote them, but why doesn’t he speak?

They exist in different directions.

I came back to her, however briefly, and we drank the same cup from a well of sorrow. I left again, we moved forward. But this hollowness - you feel it too, don’t you? - this hollowness lingers. Emptiness by definition can’t grow, yet, it does, doesn’t it? Love’s Tractatus; a problem of language. Our emptiness has no shape. Our emptiness has no sound.

They exist in different directions.

But emptiness -- is it bad, really? Is it bad to have more space to be filled? Is it bad to have that capacity -- to love without limits, without burden, without end? Your emptiness, does it hurt you? Or do you do as she did, and mold a life with it? Or do you do as he did, and fill it with the echo of your song, a song beyond words?

They exist in different directions.


Photo by Sepa Sama