Letting go: a silence of five parts

II. Winternight

Ive found that the most handy tool a coward has is his ability to lie to himself. Cowards are exceptionally good at running away. So good, in fact, that a well versed coward can even flee from his own mind: the murky caverns and painful guilt that resides within. 

Poetics is all well and good, but flashiness can only take one so far. After all, words and rhymes and pretty flourishes are simply adornments to a harsher truth we all carry within. Poetry is truth with frills. 

What is the truth then? Hard to say. 

Here; a recount of one night in deep winter, when i stood at the top of the world

I liked making you laugh. More than that i liked your eyes and the way they stared into mine without bashfulness. Staring back only made me nervous. Scared. What if i stared back and found that the truth in your gaze wasnt the truth i wanted? 

I loved how you skipped when you walked - when you were happy, and how you spoke of pain so bluntly and matter-of-factly. Yet despite it all you were good at laughing. A lot of people arent good at laughing. We get so accustomed to laughing on cue, out of obligation or camaraderie. We fine tune our laughs, sprinkle within them just the right amount of mirth or reciprocation. But you had a good laugh. It was sweet and pure, and was a battlecry against the horrors of your life; a rejection of despair. To me that was beautiful. 

I liked the way you got annoyed at me, and in turn i liked to annoy you. I liked how you hid what you really wanted from the world because the world had never before cared what you wanted, and i liked the way i could always tell exactly what you wanted, and exactly how to give it to you. Or so i thought. Perhaps i am not quite the mind-reader i pretended to be. 

I hate shopping. Or at the very least i dont care about it. But i loved shopping with you. Taking our time, wandering around. 

I loved how you could read me like a book. I loved how you called me out on my bullshit. I loved how strong-willed you were, and how driven. I loved how broken you were, and how the pain inside you had been there so long it had become almost numb. I loved how that pain spilled out into me and echoed deep in the hard places of my soul; a deep and silent sadness that made me want to help people. 

I loved just sitting by you in deepest, darkest, coldest winter nights, just talking. About our pasts, our futures. The things that made our hearts sing, and the things that made them mourn. I loved how i caught pneumonia from those nights, and i love how i didnt regret it a single bit.

But most of all i loved the way that when i was with you - i felt like i had come home,

for the first time in my life.