beginning of an end

She looks up at me with blue eyes, so brilliantly striking, and with unflinching certainty in her voice tells me she can trust me. She tells me she can be “herself” around me and that I bring out the best things in her as the sun gently coerces the flowers from the ground or a butterfly from a cocoon. She is beautiful, and clever, and in another world… and I have always said this about her… we would be soul-mates.

I kiss her lips and close my eyes and my thoughts inevitably wander to another bed to another place in someone else’s embrace but this bittersweet memory is corrupted - tarnished by plodding, merciless time. Crackling static and shadowy flashes projected on a crumbling wall which rests at the edge of the world and….

I no longer hear the whispers.

It is silent in my world. I am numb..

I told her recently that “I am incapable of love” and it is the truth. The past, which I once wore like rusty armor… the past, which brought me solace, which I wrapped around quivering shoulders like an old blanket… is now, and perhaps indefinitely…. the past. I am gebbeth. I wander the world with a lovely smile and dead eyes.

I kiss her lips and feel nothing but dry uncomfortable friction - like rock rubbing metal. Although outwardly we look so happy and perfect together – so beautiful and perfect. And they see my smile. Perhaps a glint in my eye. I am an illusionist pulling off a magnificent trick, playing to their hopes and dreams, and what people do not see is the aged, ghastly painting I keep stored away – a painting of me dying day by day – and every breath I take I add a stroke of black, red or gray.

Tears and rain as I look to the sky and I have reached a point in my life where all I can do is simply…. laugh.