[Not part of my Muse Story, I hate to break the flow, but I had to write this, just had to.]
I don't know where I am.
The only thing that keeps me from feeling lost is you.
And I've looked around, and tried so hard -
Still the streets have a name I cannot pronounce.
But its strange how its here,
How in this new town,
In a different country,
So far away,
I feel right at home
Because you do.
[I know it sucks. But I had to type it. *sniff* ]
The princess in this story never wished for a prince.
The princess in this story never believed in any love except the love she showered upon herself.
The princess in this story smirked as each of her friends, stumbling into youth, stumbled into love.
But somewhere in the course of her story, the princess wondered how it would be,
To find someone as perfect as she.
The other person in this story was not as perfect.
The other person in this story lived in his own world,
With his opinions, his thoughts, his book and his mind,
He had his own universe that seemed to expand.
But somewhere in the course of the red shift of his universe,
He wondered if he would ever collide with an eternal, ethereal star in outer space.
And she wanted to be a star that would shine forever.
This is their Big Bang Theory.
He was the cosmos, she was the chaos.
He was the Black Hole she allowed herself to collapse into.
She was that star he loved to observe,
As she twirled in his sky with bursts of light.
And it was just out of this world.
Some princesses spend their lives in the pursuit of a prince,
Some princesses are destined to find true love.
The princess in this story was neither of the two.
Some men spend their lives looking to blaze a trail of glory,
Some men create history quite accidentally.
All he wanted to do was follow a path well trodden, and then silently take a detour.
Together they were the flawless loophole, as the fireworks danced across the sky.
And as the meteors burnt the night sky with showers of sparks,
Brighter than the sun that pervaded their atmosphere,
She was the dazzle of sunshine,
He was the glow of the moon –
As one, they lived in twilight paradise.
There is no ending to their astral tale,
No happy ever after, no tragic aftermath.
And in the end that eventually arrived,
She was the detour he took.
And his was the sky that she shone eternally in.
He straightened his tie, the tuxedo creased to perfection.
Jauntily waved a goodbye to the wife who smiled at his rakish precocity.
She shook her head, but he never saw –
The Look of Love, the Visual Caress she gave him as he turned and left.
She would never know, and he would never tell.
Tinkling champagne glasses, the chink of cutlery, glittering diamonds on necks and ceilings, glittering ice cubes in glasses of expensive liquor.
It was here that he would see the other her – she dripping diamonds, he oozing charm.
Polite talk over portions of cuisine neither liked.
Dainty laughter. Suave smiles. The rise and fall of conversation.
Dancing eyes with little reflections of the blazing fire in the mantelpiece, the steady gaze, never looking away.
Little gestures and moving closer; compliments flowing like the wine in their glasses.
A surreptitious hand around faked cold shoulders on the balcony that really wasn’t chilly.
The bubbling excitement of the treacheries they both were committing.
They would never know, and they would never tell.
The wife, meanwhile, sat at home, polishing picture frames with pictures from the wedding.
Picture-perfect life cut out from glossy monthly magazines.
That’s what she thought anyway.
Their young child blissfully asleep, blissfully ignorant.
Just like his mother.
Just like his mother, who never realised when her home had turned into just a house.
Who never realised that she was turning into the china dolls she used to collect.
Who never saw the warmth slipping away.
Who never realised that the gifts he gave her were just a ruse – the other one got so much more, but she never realised.
She would never know, he would never tell.
When he got home, he was never guilty.
Never repentant.
The other her was quite the same.
She was conning someone too.
But the one who was being conned would never realise; she never intended on disclosure.
Even he was proud of his stunningly beautiful acquisition, in a perpetual state of wonder since her assent to his proposal.
He called her his ‘social butterfly’ – not seeing that his butterfly had long before flitted away.
And all he was left with was a ghost of an exquisite elusive shadow who fibbed.
But even he would never know, and she would never, ever tell.
And so they lived their lives.
In glitzy parties and premieres over sparkly bubbly, the man and the woman met.
Locked gazes, witty repartee. The tension that was born out of the forbidden.
Hand in criminal hand, unlawful banter, illegitimate intimacy.
The rush of blood to the head – the floating sensation.
Like yin-and-yang – he the black, she white – she the Bonnie, he Clyde.
In together in something so wrong, but so right.
But tonight -
The butterfly and her consort slightly tipsy, giggled down the stairs
Inebriated just by the presence of the other, he hailed a carriage.
But tonight -
The lover who loved the butterfly’s shadow came looking for his capricious spouse
Driving fast, as impatient lovers are apt to do.
But tonight -
The flighty temptress’ high companion marched onto the street.
The last thing he saw were headlights on the dim boulevard.
As the lights neared fast, he thought of the blissful ignorant;
It was just ironical how he left that thought incomplete,
Just as incomplete he had made his wife’s life.
It was just ironical she had never realised what he had done to her.
He took his secret to the grave tonight.
Tears flowed like the champagne had, but the tears were from the eyes of the one he had never acknowledged.
She had loved him the way she was supposed to.
Magnificent funeral, haunting melodies on the organ, marble mausoleum, loving epitaph.
Black and tears the fashion of the day.
The grieving wife never knew who that mysterious woman was, who smiled sadly and laid a rose on the coffin.
The grieving child soon forgot the father he had never really remembered.
The grieving wife recovered in time.
But she never knew, and he never told.
Genesis -
The crackling of an unfurling thought,
As curls of graphite form on a page.
Stroke upon stroke, scrawl withing scrawl,
Out of nothing, something is born.
Disjointed scramblings of an idea flying past,
The hurry to capture it before it splatters on the wall behind.
And loops and arcades, crosses and a scratch,
Words transform to sentences quivering with meaning,
The ink is still wet, but it dries with a brief glimmer of light.
Eyebrows furrow , searching for complexity
To lend a hidden meaning to what is to come,
Looking to impress the one before,
Conning and convoluting for a false sense of intellect.
Intellect is in simplicity,
But no one knows that yet.
And so the sputters, the fits and starts -
And the page begins to fill.
In a trance, sentences paragraph themselves,
And pages turn hurriedly and the nib hammers out
Lines and loops, curves and slopes
Falling over, spilling over -
And the blankness is filled with all that you had to say.
A satisfied sigh.
Apocalypse -
Darting eyes full of extinguished embers of a pretend fire,
Disillusionment spreads.
And with the terse fistful of paper,
It is the end of a world.
And when the icy moonlight casts a silver wash on all that is around you,
I revel in the warm glow of the sunshine that falls over me.
When the distant radio blares with the faint buzz of a song you never liked,
I know you think of me because I like it, that very buzz.
It is in that very moment we know we vary.
Night falls with a cloak of cloistering obscurity and you fancy the dimness -
While I look for a lightbulb, cursing the dark.
With all those numbers in your head, the symbols are a game -
I struggle to rid myself of their engulfing murkiness.
And we are different, I think you've realised it too,
But just to be different, you'll disagree,
You know I know, and its fine by me.
So, in the end, my point is this -
I like it this way.
(Say you don't, but I know you do.)