The Adventures Of John B : The Sacred Stone

Part 33 (Continued) - The Bells Of My Past, Clashing With You.

Can you hear that?

That's the sound of you and me.

We melt, meld, clash, love, hate, harmonize, contrast, complement, destroy each other.

We're everything we should be and everything we shouldn't be.

Can you hear it?

My love for you, a wonderful symphony- two dancing figures spinning in a chilly room, their abundant passion the only presence of warmth.   

Can you hear it?

My heartbreak, a million pieces of this throbbing, bloody mess shattering.  I sit and watch, knowing I'll never again see my heart complete, because you have taken everything and wrenched it from my body over and over again.  You steal the fragments I had once graciously, willingly handed to you, and I can do nothing- crying because I know that only I did this to myself.

Can you hear it?

This blissful ignorance, a life I choose - a place to hide from reality.  To never again face what I can't understand, what I can't accept.

I've fooled myself so deliberately. I've been so in love with the idea of love that I haven't stopped to think of what it really is.  I am in love with a hopeless idea of a fantastical, wonderful romance. 

I'm in love with a lie.

A lie so sweet that it could almost feel true.   A truth shaped by the hands of deceit.

I'm such a fool.

So much so that I choose to believe it.

That I choose to love you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Breathe.

I stare at him in shock.   He tilts his head, noting my surprise.

And my body feels so light, like I could float on air.  The balloons of my past flying away, ones that I once tried so hard to outrun with small feet, ones that I tried so hard to grasp with chubby hands.

Maybe he will be able to grab me, maybe he will be the anchor that finally leaves me grounded.   Rooted to the shore, a lonely spirit tied in with the sands of life- drifting in an endless wind until an overpowering gust lets me escape to a world beyond.

"Oh."

He pauses, as if my reaction is too incomprehensible- as if he has to take a second to process his own lapse of judgement.

"..Forget that."

I looked up, taken aback by his momentary vulnerability.  

I'm drowning in a breathing sea, its pulse laying me down to rest in the very pit of darkness.  I'm soaring in a flightless sky, drifting on uneventful winds.  A mindless mind so intriguingly complex made up of such stupidly simple thoughts.

The same thing that sets me free will be the very thing that detains me. Just because it has let me go doesn't mean it will let me fly.  Who's to say the skies aren't just another cage of yours, who's to say that you're not the one preventing me from venturing any further?

The man studied me carefully with cautious consideration.  A cigarette tipped over his fingers as he held it out to me.

Like he was giving me his trust, like he was confiding in me- admitting the darkest corners of his mind with a faint hope that I could be a steady light.