Heaven, when i held you again

Present

Was everything spoken behind that screen then? Was all that you spoke of, all that was said just a simple exterior built to contain your true self?
In front of you I had laughed as i do a friend. Cried as i am, a child. Taken all that you gave me and believed it all, thinking i knew you.
Was that you? Before you, I had presented my true self, in sleep exposed my vulnerability.

And the moment the mask fell.
Was it in the chorus, where you let true feeling leech into lyric? Or was it in commemoration, in front of me, hundreds of others, you broke the façade of professionalism. Such bravery took a literal lifetime to muster. And the lifeline in question, did its passing finally allow the mask to drop?

Why is it that we love dearer in death than ever in life? Did you ever ponder that too?
That year, in a stroke of luck, my favourite poem became the poem wherein my merit would be derived from. Depicting time throughout a lifeline as precious and beautiful as the jewelled arc of a waterfall, and the "quick intense" love felt before time pooled into darkness.

They say grief is love without a destination. Where the bearer no longer can hold the person they love, the love once given can no longer reach a recipient.
In its stead, grief, the absence of love in the absence of life.

Love, a subcategory within Life, because in a life you love. You love caregivers despite all their thorns, because other than that, what else is there to love? Where there is love, there must be hatred too. In the absence of love, you find love elsewhere.
You love the father walking his children home. He could have ushered them hurriedly into the back of a small car. But instead he is content walking his daughter home as she loves to gaze at the blossoms.
You love the woman in the cold room, where you had lain, hidden from sight and unwanted. With her, you too blossom under stark light, as she listened patiently to raw, rambling tales of a child's mundane life. Books- places where I found solace, my escapism from the tiny underground room, were shared and loved together.

And you love the man in-front of the whiteboard. In his voice, you find a tone heard all around you, yet was something you never had. The man who treated you like humanity. A thing so minimal yet crucial to conscience, extending an invitation to society.

"Grief, the final translation of love."