We are each of us angels with only one wing,
and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Luciano De Crescenzo
Evenings have now become synonymous with solitude in my lexicon. The
silence slices through me like a double-edged knife. I want to talk, to scream,
to wail but there's no one around to hear me. No, no one will hear my howls, no
one will wipe away my tears. There'll be no silent comfort. The longing is, oh, so big and so small are
we, the people that make up its parts.
How silly is our life and how
fools are we to put up with it as it is! Silly and tragic. How does it
change courses from one moment to the next, just like that? How does it break
our dreams into pieces all at once? In a moment, in a single fateful moment
I've lost everything, I've lost everyone. I've lost you and all our crazy
friends; the poets of life, the prophets of doom. Almost everyone I ever loved have
become pieces in the labyrinth of my memories: you, Maria, Kostas, William,
Emily… You've all turned into ghosts and the sun no longer caresses my soul. We are but shadows of shadows, Kostas
used to say, and he was absolutely right.
The weird thing is though that an untimely feeling of sanguineness seems
to be currently running through my whole being. I feel that from now on
everything will go well for me, but how? How? How can that happen since I've
lost you, the most precious stone of my existence, the flame that burned my
body and my heart? Am I finally going mad? I sit here, I look at the earth that
cages your human body and somehow I feel optimist! How can it be?
This night is, like the ones that preceded it, deadly quiet. The heaven
above is dressed in cloudy black and the stars, just like yesterday, are
furnishing their light on some other skies. It's as if the elements can feel my
pain and trying to silently stand by my side.
Water has started falling from above. A light drizzle. The tears of the
clouds come cold and wash over me, and bring joy the grass, the handkerchief of the lord, according to Whitman.
Everything reminds me of you, all of you. And every single thing cries
out to me: you are alone. The mask of sorrows has become one with my face but I
know that one day I will expel it, I will get used to the new order of things
and get on with my life, but, of course, I will never forget.
Eleni! Your name keeps running in circles in my mind, I can hear it
whispered by the wind, sang by the birds, and I can see it written on this land
by the raindrops.
I wonder if you've finally found salvation, my love. My love! How
ironic, I've never called you that when you were still alive and yet here I am
doing it now. The distances that tear us apart and bind us together. Everything
can be said when no longer anyone has anything to lose.
I'm going to tell you something, something of old that was left
unspoken, thus it's still new: I've always made dreams for Us. I would sit in a
train, watching the scenery hurriedly passing by before my misty eyes, and think
about you. I would fly towards distant lands, looking at the clouds beside me,
the sea and the earth below, and think about you. I would walk in green fields
and deserted beaches, I would climb up mountains and go down ravines, and think
about you. I wanted us to share the same images, to live the same sunsets, to
experience the same things, to rise together to the heights of our collective
imagination. I've dreamed all that with my eyes open, but the moment I closed
them, I could no longer see us together. Why? The answer to that arrived to me
in the most cruel of ways, as you well know.
As I look back I now realize that our differences were big, but somehow
we've learned to live with them. If we ever became a couple, probably they
would be a problem, an obstacle that would pull as apart. Not becoming one is
the thing that saved our friendship. As for our common interests they were few,
but enough to keep us close: the poetry and the music, our readings and
sporadic excursions to the islands or the countryside, the most simple yet
beautiful things.
I close my eyes and I bring back to life in my head all that we and our
friends have lived together. Our discussions without end, the fugs, the nonstop
drinking and the singing in the hidden beaches of Paros, Emily's stories,
Kosta's and Maria's silent eye to eye conversations, William's accompanying of
our every word and thought with his guitar. I remember you shedding silent
tears as Emily sang Imagine with her blues voice, Maria smiling almost inwardly
with a knowledgeable look on her face, and the rest of us staying still, lost
in the magic of the moment. I remember the sun rising like a red crocus through
the sea, the birds waking and starting their morning chorus, the fire, the
ecstasy in our gaze…
And the river of sweet memories continues to flow without a break,
before it unavoidably spills into the stormy seas of my being.
To be continued.
The image was taken from here.
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