Cut

“In the cloud, reflections mirror reflections, cutting out the object and leaving only infinite emptiness.” 
Joseph MacKinnon

~

My hand was in yours. Your hand was in mine. And there was a moment where I didn't know which was which. Then, the moment was gone, and another one came. It was the moment of separation, slowly tearing the pages of the book we wrote in our minds, pages about the dreams that we carried in our hands, interlocked. Yet, right before that second moment ended, time froze. Time froze with the tips of our fingers barely touching and I knew that a blink later I'd be falling off your side of the edge like drawings of sands made of demons while you'd be falling, over and over, in water-drops, off mine, like an imagined suicide scene on playback.

But time froze because it knew we were timeless. And it just sat there on a dusty chair that had 'Faith' carved on its back, watching the motionless picture of Fear's sword of Doubt pointed at Love's heart of Hope.

Cut.

~

You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience, watching an ego disguised as reason taking up the role of the lead actor. You should know that this podium is not only set for a grand masquerade where the truth doesn't matter. It's set for anyone who has something genuine to say. And everything you see on stage is but a staged symbol, a moderately hidden clue for what's going on behind the scenes. So get up and come inside for it is in the dark curves of your mind that you find the scriptwriters. And when you do, it will neither feel nor smell good back there because all your lies, fears and insecurities dwell in the ego's lair, fueling your quest for a nonexistent power. Maybe, just maybe, one day you'll find it in you to write your own script, your own lines instead of lying yourself to sleep.

~

And so we spend the time that wastes us and write stories that erase us. Then time just vanishes because the shame leaves no place for any other concept but disgust. And they stare blankly at the conscience that died with its mouth open and its eyes gouged, screaming two simple words for the child that ran away into the horizon, Come Back.

~

Once, in a nonexistent time and twice, in a place of delusion, a child ran into his reflection in the mirror and broke it. Both were running to find themselves but what they found was something else. The boy in the mirror found a broken hourglass of sand and water, drowned in mud. And the boy with blood on his face found an open locket with an empty picture frame and a clock that's always stuck at dawn. Each paced around in his room in recurrent patterns of confusion between the definition of a curse and the 'nondefinition' of a curse. And as they walked through life, the pieces of glass wrote, with blood and footprints, tainted puzzled words and painted worded puzzles. They met again, and again, in different colors and shapes, on the surface of other people's eyes. And many mirrors were broken twice, and twice, again.

~

Whether you break mirrors because you can't see yourself in them or polish them because they withhold the truest lies you've ever written, know that you are neither of the elements of the inner fight, nor are you the sum of the broken mirrors.

You're that person still sitting in the audience, alone.

~

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” 
Konstantin Stanislavski

Smoke

"What I've felt, what I've known

Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door, should I open it for you?"
Metallica 

~

It is a dark and deeply beautiful view. And I want you to be here with me. And I tell myself now that I want you here because I want all the stars hiding behind empty clouds above me get the chance to meet that one star that shot through my heart. But I know that I just want you here because I love you. And I just said those three words out loud four times in a row and I don't know exactly why.

Yet now I tell myself that words are but empty promises, hopeful fireflies that die when their ink catches fire, when the plot reveals that death is the hidden title of everything they wrote in the wind at night. And I suspect that this wind travels through me because I am not here, and that even if I were, the night would still magically lose its memory at dawn, just like it did yesterday.

So what happens to these forgotten moments of wonder where you only exist in my imagination? Do they die with me just like I'm dying in them, with the sound of your laugh in this fictional background? Perhaps the fireflies I made up will align in this starless sky to spell out your name in light, to make me smile right before the curtain closes and death applauds with the starry letters falling gently onto my empty bed of heartbeats. And, then, perhaps, you'd wake me up in the glorious morning night-people dream about when they're dead and that's when I'd tell you that you are the light and deeply beautiful view that erased the night in my heart.

[...]

It's almost morning now, and the silently still buildings are staring back at me with a giant grey cloud fading into pieces above them. And the motionless scene reeks so badly of death that I almost forget that there are hundreds of lives having dreams as vivid as the smoke in my breath and as dead as the breath in my smoke.

Yet, interestingly, just like smoke, the truth has three faces. And to every face, there are two scales. When you face your heart, the pendulum swings between Faith and Fear. When you face your self, the clock either ticks for Goodness or for Power. And when you face your soul at midnight, you'll either see that Love is a timeless mirror, or you'll be lost in the drama of self-deception, divided in images of broken silhouettes in the shards of glass you pretend to inhale so you can fall out of sleep from this grand delusion.

[...]

So enter the world of an enigma that was broken when it was born. Enter the world of lies, a world that tricks its own existence into death. Enter a world that can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction. Enter a world of make-believe purple rain falling onto yellow autumn leaves to write a fairy-tale even though the author is colorblind. Enter a world where thoughts become footsteps that leave no trace on this desert sand, while all the feelings in the world are colorlessly buried alive underneath this damned map of empty patterns.

[...]

Just like this smoke, I have one face. Just like this smoke, I was once the purple fire that caught the curtain by surprise. And just like this smoke, I, now, into the morning wind disappear.

So wake up and read the wind and perhaps you'll comprehend how beautiful it feels to burn into love with the sound of your laugh in the background.

I know the night won't remember any of this.

But maybe you will.

I love you. It's only one whisper this time. And I know you just heard it.

~

"I take this key
And I bury it in you

Because you're unforgiven too."

Metallica

Exception

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.” 

Kiran Desai

~

An old friend once told me that anyone, no matter how much you love them, can be replaced by someone else. I still remember how I laughed and told him that his statement is an insult to everything I believe in, and that his view of the world is very sad. I recently met up with this friend after a few years of distance and when I saw him he still had that same look of detachment in his eyes. He thankfully knew me well enough to skip the small talk and the fake bullshit, and a minute into our conversation, he dropped the bomb, with his careless gaze piercing through my supposedly heavily-armored mind:

"What happened? Your eyes look almost as faithless as mine."

My reaction was that I looked away, downward then to the right with that smile people wear when someone sums up their past with a catchphrase, the same one they use when a very close person unknowingly calls them by the word that strikes at all their inner scars. It was at that moment that I realized how right he was about almost everything and how I simply couldn't see it because of my childish ideals. I wanted to discuss the "anyone can be replaced" issue but whatever I was going to learn wasn't worth reminding him of the people he lost. Instead, I shifted the subject from faith in people to faith in God and then to the difference between faith and religion. 

I didn't tell him what happened because I didn't want to boost his faithlessness. 

But it's actually plain, simple and uncomplicated: We're all the same. We are the forgotten that forget, selfishly replacing the people who once lived in our hearts. We're all the same. And it happens in a blink. You spot a stranger and you close your eyes with the feeling that these strangers have become family, that they're an immortal part of you. And then, a few years later, you open your eyes to see that they're strangers once again. More importantly, you see that your wish upon a stranger is sadly a very common one. We're all the same and everyone keeps blinking at the strangers around them. We're all the same, used and replaced, using and replacing our own hearts, as if they meant nothing to us. We're all the same, a faithless dreamer whose memories were dreams that never happened, whose words of love were perhaps just a love for words, and whose hugs were terribly, terribly convincing lies. We're all the same, replacing old words and feelings with new ones. 

You recently told me that I was different from everyone else you've ever met and I told you that I see beautiful things around you. I should have added that I'm not different, that we're all the same. But instead I told you that I'll be leaving soon and you told me that you would give up the world for us to stay together. But I didn't say anything because you used a word that an old version of me used to share with a girl who was once just like you.

I don't know how you manage to remind me of how I used to be when I was a kid, how you talk and smile like that girl used to when she was a kid, how you don't mind that you sometimes remind me of the person you replaced and, most importantly, I don't know why I can't stop seeing beautiful things around you. I don't know why you feel like an exception.

So what happens next? And why are you here at such a terrible timing? What if we're all kids pretending to be grown-ups? And what if I told you that my once empty heart doesn't feel so empty anymore? What if I told you that I'll have two pictures of you in the apartment? Would you come visit, accidentally fall asleep, and wake up with your head on my shoulder in both picture and reality? Will your smile still be broken then?

What happens next?

~

“I’ll rearrange my love for you like I’ll rearrange the living room furniture. But first I have to replace everything.
” 

Jarod Kintz