Dear Meier,
The flames in the glass scream one more time before it eats all the air to keep it alive. It blinks away in my room as I lay in bed staring up at the dark. I could cut the heat on, but I enjoy the cold of winter. Even if my feet hurt from the icy touch outside I wish for it to snow, but what I wish for is growing roots in my head.
The thoughts I did not welcome into my life are beating at the door, and I fear I can’t stop them. They have long ago finger out how to unlock my door and walk right in carrying pills and beer. We party the night away until the sun starts to wave at the world and they rush back into the shadows. I’m left with the hangover of the Night.
The door starts to open, and I wish for them to go. I don’t want the pills. I don’t need the beers. I don’t want to give in and drop out.
Lord, send someone else into my bed.
The cried of owl touches my window pulling my eyes to the glass as Nyx fades into my room from the owl sitting there. My friend, she is just as perfect as I have ever seen; long black hair with the stars cast into it, pale skin like the moon itself and, a body made for the gods. She smiled at me the way angels ought to smile and crawled into my bed. Her greens eyes are swimming in mine, and my words fall on how faultless this goddess of the Night is to me. If I tried to put to page how splendid she is they would diminish her greatness, I dare not cause such a slight against her.
All that you need to know is Nyx was sleeping in my bed. She keeps the thoughts at bay and keeps my tried bones warm in the cold. We made love for hours as we often do when she comes to me. Nyx, my one true love, I have given my life to her many years ago. I have stood front of God All Mighty, taken her hand in mine and become as one soul in front of the Lord.
She is my everything.
She is my life.
She is my art.
Hours passed in the darkness with her breathing on my chest and her hands tightly wrapped in mine. I have had many lovers before and have always hated them in my bed after the deed was done. There was a longing for them to be gone and I left alone with my thoughts, but with Nyx, there is no such longing in me. In fact, if I must tell you, I wish her never to leave.
I sat up from her putting my feet on the foot staring at the Xs on the calendar. Each X another step to the dramatic change coming for me in the near future. A change I’m not sure I am ready to handle and if the state I have been in over the last few days is any hint about the change to come, then by no means, I am ready for it.
I don’t it want to come.
I want it to stay far, far away. I have more things to do. I need more time.
My hands covered my face I could no longer face the calendar or the ticking of the Xs. I couldn’t bear to look at them any longer or the empty walls around me. The whiteness of the plain walls softly speaking to me as if I was in the madhouse. Maybe, I am in the madhouse. Maybe, the break down I was on the edge of the other night came, and they had to toss me into the looney bin for a while, my mind hasn’t caught up to reality just yet.
But my mind felt her hands draped over me with a soft whisper of concern. I turned to face her deep green eyes and told her. I told her I didn’t want to face what my life had become. I thought by now I would be in a place far different than this one. I wouldn’t be searching rooms for a way out, cursing my friends for their happiness, hating myself for being a failure.
I believe when I was young that by this time in my life I would be lying my head beside my wife and working on my dreams with her. That, we, this person who I have not met, would be building a life together that we could not even have dreamt of in our youth. I would be planning on children by now and how to give them all I never had. I would be able to have a strong financial foundation my family never had in my life. And by all the angels I wouldn’t be living to next paycheck or by the good grace of my family.
I would be a real man by now.
I would have a real life by now, and not just dreams on a page.
I can’t face what my life has become.
“You shouldn’t compare yourself to others or their expectation,” she told me in all her wisdom. What wise words they are but isn’t that the joke, that I’m not comparing myself to anyone, and the punchline is, I’m comparing myself to me. I am comparing myself to who I thought I was going to be because it was the person I have always wanted to be in my life.
“There is something more going on,” she said, and she was right. After all, it wasn’t like there really was a goddess of the Night in my bed. She is not real, but she was right.
I fear like I have feared before that tomorrow will be my last and all the letters I have written to you will mean nothing. I look at all my work and all the letters I have poured to people. Some many people have received my words in the desperation they would understand me. Many of those foolish souls had only added to the pit I have been in over the years. They were blind to what I was trying to do which was simply let something of me out, but I can’t blame them too much. For the letters, they read were mere words on a page while they were tears in my mind.
I read over them in the hopes to keep tomorrow locked in the cage of the Night, but if I now lay me down to sleep and don’t wake in the morning’s light, what would any of it mean?
But that is not what keeps me up at night. The fear of my words being meanness in time is something I can handle. One day, I’ll die and become dust, and my name will be lost in the winds, only to speak in passing. I know this, and I know, you know this, but that is my fear. My fear is what happens when I die.
I will stand in front of the Lord to answer for all my sins. Sin, I must note here, is the disobeys of God’s law, while Evil, it is believing one to be God or better than Him. The one sin I’m utter terrific to have to answer is, “Why did I waste so much time? Why did I waste the blessing I was given?”
God has saved from the Angel of Death many times. He has kept His angel at bay for some great reason in my life. I have seen the angel staring at me, clicking his teeth to taste me, and tapping his foot waiting to get me. I have seen him, and I have chased, and the Lord has kept him from me … but what if, I’m wasting all of it? What if I have failed Him?
These hands were blessed to create where they can do nothing else, and this mind crafted for Him, I understand this greatly, and yet, I feel as if I’m letting Him down. I can handle, maybe not even care, if I let you down or my friends or my family or my lovers. I can write away all the disappointed from people, but the one thing I can’t let go of is if I disappointed the Lord.
I guess the irony would be if I got all that I have stated in this letter and still felt the same way. If I was blessed with a wife and children and my books in your library but still felt as if I was letting Him down. What if, I got none of those things and my life was spent standing at a job I hated, but I didn’t feel as if I failed the Lord? What if that is my reason for living, my lot in life? Can I handle it? Do I want it?
Yes, if that is His desire.
With a Handshake,
A Writer
No comments:
Post a Comment