At first, I lay the simple question haunting my conscience: What is Love, that we may know the depths of it? And I answer anon. Love is a long-lasting, simple whisper, softly spoken, quiet enough to be heard by two wanderers and loud enough to thunder its echoing sound throughout the Universe. It is the most real of abstracts and the uniquest of feelings. Love is of purity unmatched, of simplicity without peer. And yet, this wonder is most often found to be the opposite of what it is. Here is the true definition of Love: it's the attraction between two that can break all bonds and limits and rules and standards. It is a beautiful virus with no cure, and when two have the disease, it's a blesséd fiction.
I have forgotten how we met... perhaps, nay, quite likely, we always knew each other, but we were just lost. When we finally found one another, it was a fresh breath drawn for the first time since youth; it excited something in us we'd never felt before: it was a storm and a calm, chaos and order, light and darkness. One thing that I do remember, however, was the instant where our lives shifted and locked together-nature could rest at last, for what was meant to be, finally was.
"Love is the secret," she told me, "the secret which no man tells to another. It is the secret that men learn on their own. They glance at their mistress, and, suddenly, they enter a chamber filled with treasures innumerable, into the very heart of living. And in this pyramid of bliss, they can rest for eternities, Pharaohs in love." All this she told me, I clearly recall, without a single spoken word, without a movement of her lips, without a moment of glorious conversation. She spoke these magnificent words to me with her passion-filled actions only, with her eyes, with her soul. Our love instantly transported us unto a new dimension with the gentlest embrace or the softest word. We drifted away with each look and were enraptured with the slightest mention of one another.
A thousand and one moments passed, each sweeter than the one before, each more filled with struggle and relief and love, each pulling us in closer and closer, binding us together with unbreakable chords of unity and nearness. We danced away life, never for a moment pausing, never for a moment taking a break from love or happiness. Albeit, breath upon breath, heartbeat upon heartbeat, time passed by as the pendulum swung unceasingly, and soon the ragged papers of history became ancient once more, and the children in us seamlessly abandoned us, leaving behind mature adults.
Beloved reader, if you want a cheerful tale, begone. Read no further, for, I'm sure, the story so far has sufficed and satisfied. However, if you want to hear my complete and tragic account, read on. Read the graceful words that are perchance a figment or, more likely, a dismal account of a melancholic mortal.
...The thousand and one moments passed, each sweeter than the one before, each more filled with ecstasy. One night, as I loudly whispered for her in the dark, in order for my whisper to be heard over the loud, rushing winds, I got a feeble reply that sent chills down my spine. She spoke with fragile tenderness, a dying gasp she whispered back. I looked, and soon I realized that Nature, in her great curiosity, was testing this most beautiful of loves, to answer the age-old question: which is stronger, Love, or Death? As the winds blew harder in a thunderous laugh of Nature, my Love grew pale and sickly and, before we could say our farewells, she grew utterly still.
In her curious, greedy quest for knowledge, Nature took from me what I loved most, what I lived for, what I needed above breath or food or any sustenance.
In wretched loneliness, I turned to art. I painted with my tears, I moaned a few ballads, I wrote a few lines-
I wanted to cry. I tried to.
But the tears never returned to my face,
Nor did my lover to this place,
Nor her gray eyes, nor her embrace,
But, soon enough, I died, too.
But nothing could replace her love.
Now I daily read this writing to engrave it upon my memory, that I may never forget my love, nor her magnificent beauty, nor her abounding wisdom, nor her beatific smile, nor her captivating eyes, nor her sweet and tender touch, nor her joyous life, nor her untimely death.
Adonis
