***
When we made it to the other side of the birdge at last, through (other people’s) love stories (some of which I am sure didn’t last), when we made it through the bridge at last, you asked ‘(Melancholy aside), what’s the silver lining, there must be a silver lining still in decisions of the past, those that cannot be undone.’
‘Sometimes melancholy is all there is, no silver lining, no right way to sugar coat what is, no reason to paint white what’s red and grey and black. Sometimes all you can do is cross that bridge, sometimes the best you can do is simply just walk through.’
***
Fast forward three days and you are no longer here, I changed the bedsheets too, they no longer smell of (me and) you. Fast forward three days and you are no longer holding me, you are not holding me in the only way that can keep me warm, the only way that can keep me safe and sane and calm and warm at night. Fast forward and I am still paying my duties at my office job, still trying to make sense of it all, drinking lukewarm coffee, brewing tea, killing time, pressed for time, still thinking of you, the time not spent with you.
Fast forward and I am cycling home from work, late at night, still cold, still thinking of you.
Still thinking. Sometimes the silver lining is knowing we had the whole sky once, at once. Sometimes the silver lining is knowing that for a moment we had the whole starry night, even if we didn’t know it back then, even if we didn’t think back then that it was enough. Sometimes the silver lining is the crack left in our hearts when we are too broken to believe we can let the light in, we can still let the love in, even if only for a moment, even when we know that the fireworks (probabilistically) don’t last. Sometimes the silver lining is the leap of faith we take for this beautiful illusion of love, the planes we catch to touch, hairs, lips, private parts, the planes we catch to hold hands, to dream of a future together even when reality comes knocking us back to the ground.
***
The silver lining is the smooth line your hesitant smile carves on your face. Your right cheek as I watch it turn pink from above. The lines that spring at the corners of your eyes when (I make) you laugh your heart out. The lines my hands draw on your back, the single line our bodies merge into when we have mastered the perfect back hug, the perfect silence, no noises, just words that do not need to be said, the whole wide sea of emotions, swimming (as I like to do) in your eyes.
***
London.
With its dazzling lights and millions of unrecognisable, half elated half exhausted (maybe one third lost if I am honest) people. London, 2018. A vast city, a promise it will be ‘us’ this time, not us by-passing millions of them to find each other, a promise of ‘more, more, I wanna have more (of you)’, our common dreams and worries, your camera, my (pretty, pretty painful) words, a vast city yet you’ll be the world I’d (mostly) want to travel.
***
And if we put all this mind travelling aside, the places, the loneliness, the distances, this obsession with spaces and gaps (in the way our relationship evolves), the fear of losing you aside, this is a reminder that you can lose yourself searching for silver linings only to find that if you look behind there’s the line, only to find that if you just fast forward time, there you’ll be again, holding what mattered all along close to you, the whole starry night by your side, staring the sky you once had and lost in the eye. A full circle, the same starry sky, seen from a slightly different angle now, this time in all its glorious beauty.
***
Rational Artist 